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Cooking Vinyl [Release date : 01.09.23]
1987, and the critics said they wouldn’t last, and here we are, 36 years later, and Deacon Blue are releasing… wait for it… a 41 track, double CD album titled All The Old 45s (the description, “45s” is indicative of the band’s old school mindset). It also comes in double vinyl.
As well as this abbreviated career “best of…”, a 14 CD, Complete Albums collection, which includes a brand new, Unplugged CD, is also being marketed, simultaneously.
At the core of the 2 CD Anthology, there’s a sizeable clutch of songs from the band’s first two albums, Raintown and When The World Knows Your Name.
These songs perhaps more than any other are a celebration of a band whose adult pop trades vigorously in emotions – nostalgia, melancholy, romance and ultimately, optimism.
And dignity. ‘Dignity’, the story of a Glasgow scaffie and the dingy he had saved for all his life, launched the band with a song that’s both personal and universal. It was for those who can look back on the hardships of their youth, and be thankful for those humble beginnings, and the values they instilled.
The bluesy, lived in timbre that Ricky Ross’s voice always possessed adds a strong, driven sense of yearning to enduring songs like ‘Chocolate Girl’, ‘Wages Day’, ‘Real Gone Kid‘, and a weighty lyrical dynamic to ‘When Will My Telephone Ring’ and most especially to ‘Fergus Sings The Blues’ the touchstone that points up Ross’s writing and performing inspirations.
But there’s not much to choose between them. More recent material, ‘Love And Regret’, ‘Only Tender Love, ‘City Of Love’ saw the band sneaking in the back door of blues and Pop into Alt Rock territory. The band, Ross, Lorraine McIntosh, Dougie Vipond and James Prime confidently flexing their now well developed musical and songwriting muscle.
In the end though, even when widening their horizons, it’s Ross’s undeniable songcraft that carries them through.
All The 45s proves to be a remarkably lean and confident collection of songs, from a band who always put heart and soul first in the making of commercial music. *****
(The band embark on a 12 date tour of the UK and Ireland through September and October.)
Review by Brian McGowan
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14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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