City of Love Deacon Blue

• 1 City of Love 04:12
• 2 Hit Me Where It Hurts 03:13
• 3 Weight of the World 03:39
• 4 Take Me 03:54
• 5 In Our Room 04:10
• 6 Intervals 03:36
• 7 Keeping My Faith Alive 03:10
• 8 A Walk in the Woods 03:57
• 9 Come on In 03:27
• 10 Wonderful 03:36
• 11 On Love 07:11
• Total Runtime 44:05

Info for City of Love

Deacon Blue, die Erfolgsband aus Glasgow mit über sieben Millionen verkauften Alben, ist endlich wieder da! Mit Hits wie „Dignity" und „Real Gone Kid" wurden die Ausnahmemusiker zu einer britischen Sensation. „City Of Love" erscheint mit elf brandneuen Tracks, die aus der Überzeugung entstanden, dass Hoffnung selbst in den hintersten Ecken einer Stadt zu finden ist. Es ist die vierte Veröffentlichung einer sieben-jahrelangen Hochphase für Deacon Blue. Mit den letzten drei Alben kehrten sie in die Top 20 UK Album-Charts zurück. Ihr letztes Album chartete sogar auf Nr. 12 und erreichte damit die höchste Chartposition seit 23 Jahren. Vom ersten Song „City Of Love" bis hin zum letztem „On Love" ist das neue Album unter anderem mit atemberaubenden Kompositionen von Ricky Ross und Gregor Philp gefüllt.

Sieben Millionen verkaufte Alben und 14 Hit-Singles können DEACON BLUE in ihrer mittlerweile knapp 35 Jahre andauernden Karriere verzeichnen. Nach längerer Kreativpause nach dem Album „Homesick“ aus dem Jahr 2001 startete die Band aus Schottland mit ihren drei Folgealben „The Hipsters“ (2012), „A New House“ (2014) und „Believers“ (2016) wieder voll durch. Verdienter Lohn dieses Karriereabschnitts: Alle drei Alben schafften es bis in die Top 20 der UK-Charts. Dieser Erfolg hatte einen schöpferischen Produktionsschub zur Folge. Mit „CITY OF LOVE“ spielten sie ihr bereits neuntes Studioalbum ein, mit ihrem unverkennbaren Songwriting sind sie wieder ins Mainstream Radio zurückgekehrt und sie spielen vor allem in UK vor großem Publikum.

Gründungsmitglied und Sänger Rickie Ross, der bereits auch Hits für James Blunt, Jamie Cullum oder KT Tunstall geschrieben hat, freut sich auf die Tour und das neue Album: „Wir können es nicht erwarten, mit CITY OF LOVE wieder auf die Straße zu gehen und euch unsere neuen, aber auch viele unserer alten Songs zu präsentieren. Jedes Mal, wenn wir auf Tour sind, fühlt es sich für uns wie eine große Feier an, weil wir die treuesten Fans der Welt haben. Diese Tour wird die beste, versprochen!“

Deacon Blue

Deacon Blue
were never hipsters. With six million album sales, 12 UK Top 40 singles and two No. 1 albums to their credit, they have been majorly successful and have always been adored by their fans. And their inspirational brand of soulful Scottish pop remains an enduring tonic for the troops. Indeed, when Wayne Rooney tweeted his Spotify playlist before England's vita group match against Ukraine in Euro 2012, his No. 1 song was Real Gone Kid, still one of the Glasgow group's best-loved hits. But hip? Cool? One of the bands that you'd find hanging out with the fashionistas? That was never Deacon Blue.

"I remember saying when we first got back together that we must by the uncoolest band in the world," says Deacon Blue's singer, songwriter and mainstay Ricky Ross. "But I like that. And people still love us despite all that."

So The Hipsters is a decidedly ironic title for a brilliant new Deacon Blue record, the group's first studio album since Homesick in 2001. For beneath that faintly sardonic veneer, is a collection of finely-tuned songs which find Ross reflecting on the long-distance life and times of his group with a deep, thoughtful passion. The opening track, Here I am in London Town, sets the scene as if at the start of a stage musical, as Ross conjures up an impression of how his younger self felt as he sat in a studio "waiting for the world to begin".

"I was remembering what it was like starting out, coming down to London for the first time," Ross says. "You were hoping someone would open a door and your world would start."

It is now 25 years since the band released their debut album, Raintown, and the world of Deacon Blue began in earnest. It was the first of a string of best-selling albums: When the World Knows Your Name [1989]; Fellow Hoodlums [1991]; Whatever You Say, Say Nothing [1993]; and a double-platinum compilation Our Town – The Greatest Hits [1994], after which the group split up for five years. While Ross built up his career as a songwriter and solo act, he and the other band members set about establishing themselves with remarkable success in various other fields of the media, the arts and academia. But as their lives unfolded, they never gave up on the Deacon Blue dream. A reunion show led on to a new album Walking Back Home [1999] which marked the beginning of a period to the present, during which the band has continued to reconvene whenever there has been a good reason to do so, of which there have been many.

"I suppose we thought when we went down to London the first time that everything would be solved by a record deal and hit records and that's all there was to life," says the singer Lorraine McIntosh, who has been married to Ross for 22 years. "And then, 25 years down the line, after you've all gone through life, got married, had kids and lost people you've loved, you realise that there's so much more to it than that."

"We're all the same people, but our lives have completely changed," says the drummer Dougie Vipond, who has become a familiar face as a TV presenter on BBC Scotland. "I was 18 when I joined Deacon Blue. I grew up in the band. The only thing that concerned me was making records and playing gigs. Now I've got three children and all sorts of other responsibilities. So I feel really blessed that I'm still able to do it."

"I've got a lot of things going on," says the keyboard player James Prime, who runs a Commercial Music course at the University of the West of Scotland. "But playing and touring with my friends in Deacon Blue is no problem. It's more of a wrench going back to work when you're finished."

The band were united in their determination to record a new album. And not just any new album. "We'd done the greatest hits thing for a while," Ross says, "and we needed to do some new material or not do it at all." He began by writing the song The Hipsters and then another called The Outsiders which summed up the hectic rush of life in a band: "We took the road, any road, every road out of here/Forgot the past, cut the strands, made a path, took a stand/Chased the day, raced the night, grabbed our chance didn't look/Back to where we'd come from".

"It's so different to come back to it when you're not in the thick of things," Ross says. When you're a young, aspiring musician, chasing success, nothing ever satisfies you. Now, after writing a couple of these new songs, I realized there was a different narrative developing. I felt I was in a new moment. Then I realized: It's about us! It's about being in this amazing band. It's an open love letter to Deacon Blue."

With the songs written and demoed, the band convened at Gorbals Sound, a new, state-of-the-art recording facility in the heart of Glasgow. Working with Paul Savage, a smart, young producer whose work Ross had discovered through presenting his show on BBC Radio Scotland, the band recorded the new album in the old-school way, with the whole band set up, and all playing and singing together in the studio – the first time they had worked like that since recording Fellow Hoodlums in Paris in 1991.

"I still get excited when the band is together," says Prime. "We tell each other the old jokes just to remind each other how long we've been doing it. It's lovely that Ricky has come up with an album of personal songs rather than stuff about towns and rivers and mythical characters. These are really heartfelt, one-to-one songs."

This album contains no booklet.