The Great Lakes : McIntosh Ross
Uncut November 2009

Deacon Blue duo send back letter from America.

Unacceptable in the 80's, Lorraine McIntosh and Ricky Ross are best known for fronting the wretched Deacon Blue. Mercifully, however, there are no leaden ballads about ships on this surprisingly good joint effort, which was recorded in California with a crack team who shares various Bob Dylan and Tom Waits credits. While not entirely free of blandness, the album's best tracks interweave celestial Caledonian folk-pop with wide-open-skies Americana. " A Passing Place", particularly, eleviates a plain metaphorical conceit into a gorgeous country-gospel rhapsody. Stephan Dalton