Deacon Blue Draw
Crowds To Their Feet With Backlogue Of Hits At Clyde Auditorium
Daily Record 5th December 2014
MATERIAL from their more recent LPs A New house and The Hipsters
featured prominently in a set built around standards like Loaded, Fergus Sings
The Blues and Dignity.
THERE are certain things you’d expect at
a Deacon Blue concert in Glasgow. Crowd singing. Air punching. A football chant
for Dougie Vipond. And, on Monday’s evidence, there are now certain things you
wouldn't expect. Middle-aged burly blokes going taps aff and throwing their
clothes at Ricky Ross. Lorraine McIntosh playing drums. And guitar. And
harmonica.
It seems in these days of austerity, even bands are having to
make their members work that bit harder…
Latest LP A New House, coming
less than two years after last offering The Hipsters, has seen a continued
increase in productivity and output from the second city favourites.
Material from both featured prominently in a set built around steel-hulled
standards like Loaded, Fergus Sings The Blues and Dignity, the longevity of
their popularity drawing the crowd intermittently to their feet in the
all-seated venue. Ross joked that the funeral ropes instead of crush barriers at
the front of the auditorium were a comment on the band's age. It could just as
easily have been an acknowledgement that the Armadillo can at times feel too
formal for pop.
The Best Of offerings, including a brooding Town To Be
Blamed, were met with gallus gratitude and, on at least one occasion, garment
removal.
Yes Scotland campaigner Ross kept the politics brief.
An
introduction to James Joyce Soles, a song about an American marine at the Holy
Loch, acknowledged a country having had “a conversation with itself”. Your Town,
his scathing response to Thatcherism, was tempered with an ad-lib that the town
it references no longer exists.
It was during the more considered moments
that the output best suited the venue. Most notable among those was a fine cover
of Tom Waits’ Long Way Home, revealing Glasgow’s pop veterans at their low-fi
best with McIntosh and Ross‘s voices in beautiful blend. Harmonica solos and
all. Paul English