Deacon Blue - City of Love ⅘
Glasgow’s Deacon Blue have been around for decades so you’d forgive them for slowing down or retreading old glories, I mean if they just paraded the greatest hits out for the rest of their career it’d be acceptable. However, they have other plans and on their 9th studio album, they’ve created all new magic."City of Love’ is a charming album, full of heart and warmth. It's almost completely unburdened by angst, even the vocal performances have a more fluid, easier feel to them. The histrionics have been dialed all the way back and this album is all the better for it.
Songs like ‘In Our Room’ and ‘Intervals’ flows gently past the ears, deceptively simple, Ricky Ross and Lorraine MacIntosh intertwining their vocals playfully it's very laid back.
The title track grows from an orchestral seed into a windswept, technicoloured epic, it's like something from their early works but with a measured maturity and it suits them rather well.
While the album is mostly upbeat it still retains some of that Glaswegian melancholy most clearly on ‘Weight of the World’ which tells the tale of a tortured artist, the lyric “It started getting better until it got worse, so he said goodbye, I’m away now and thanks” is almost a lift from Scott Hutchison’s final tweet the night he left us, this may or not be intentional but if it is it's a lovely tribute to the Frightened Rabbit singer.
The only downside is that there doesn’t seem to be any huge pop anthems which they excel at however at this stage Deacon Blue have nothing to prove so they’re freed up to produce whatever the hell they please and what they’ve given us is pleasing, gentle yet still playful album of pop gems celebrating their beloved Glasgow, good on them, it's not time for them to sail away on a ship called Dignity just yet.#cityoflove #deaconblue