Deacon Blue: Riding On The Tide Of Love - 2021

So, only a year after their last album, Deacon Blue are back with a somewhat gloomy, eight song, thirty minute offering that, although it has a vastly improved sound (only in places, however), has a downtrodden, slightly muffled ambience to it that hasn't caught my imagination as yet. 

The album was intended to be a companion piece to the City Of Love album. I guess the thing to do is play them both together. 

The opener and the title track, Riding On The Tide Of Love, starts with a drum sound straight out of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women. The orchestrated Kate Bush-esque She Loved The Snow, for some reason, puts me in mind of something Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel did around 1975, it's on the chorus refrain. Nothing's Changed is archetypal later-era Deacon Blue - nothing has changed, indeed. 

The valedictory Look Up should really have closed the album and Time continues the dense. gloomy feel to the album. The soulful Send A Note Out is a slow one but a great one, with fine vocals and that definite Deacon Blue feel that you can't quite put your finger on but you know it when you hear it. The same applies to the anthemic brass bit at the end of Not Gonna Be That Girl. This thoughtful, low-key collection ends with the attractive ballad It's Still Early. Give this one time, I think.

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