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