Scottish pop-rock veterans Deacon Blue have announced plans for a new ‘mini-album’, Riding On The Tide Of Love. The new record, which is available to pre-order now, is set for release on February 5th 2021. The band, who have notched up eight Top 20 albums in a career spanning four decades (and one five-year split), unveiled early details on their social media accounts this week.
The Glasgow-based sextet, who first hit the big-time with 1988 jangle-pop classic Real Gone Kid, have confirmed that the new mini-album will serve as a spiritual sequel to 2020 release City Of Love, which topped the UK Indie Albums chart in March. In a statement on the band’s website, lead singer Ricky Ross says: “When we released ‘City Of Love’ back in March we celebrated it getting to No. 1 in Scotland…and we were looking forward to a summer of festivals followed by a big tour at the end of the year. As we all know, that didn’t happen and once the dust had settled we realised we weren’t going to be going out on the road any time soon. ‘Riding On The Tide Of Love’ is a continuation of ‘City Of Love’, a companion piece that we recorded piece by piece, going into the studio one by one to record our individual parts.”
Deacon Blue’s 30-date summer tour has also been rescheduled for 2021, incorporating dates across the UK and mainland Europe. Tickets for the tour, which will see the band supported by Devonian singer-songwriter Jamie Lawson, are available on the Deacon Blue website here.
The themes of the mini-LP the group are set to take on the road next year are expected to echo those of City of Love, which Ross has suggested can be read as a love-letter to Glasgow. In an interview with The Herald earlier this year, he said “Growing up in Dundee, Glasgow and the Gorbals always seemed quite frightening places. It was a big dark place with dark tenements. Once you get to know Glasgow, you do realise that it is a city of love. It’s a city of warmth and compassion…If the album is about anything really, people need to remember that without love, a city can be the loneliest place to be. It’s about that human connection that we all need.”
The as yet unnamed first single from Riding On The Tide Of Love will be released on Friday 27th November, capping off a year unlike any other in the band’s history. The initial optimism that surrounded City of Love‘s success in March (becoming their biggest chart hit in 26 years) was rocked when three members of the group – Ross, fellow vocalist Lorraine McIntosh and drummer Dougie Vipond – contracted Coronavirus.
Whilst recovering from the virus, the band supported The National Theatre of Scotland’s online series Scenes For Survival. Lorraine McIntosh – who is also an actress in her own right – filmed a monologue for the project, which helped raise funds for theatre workers through the Scenes For Survival Hardship Fund.
Speaking to The Sunday Post on the importance of the initiative, she said “Theatre and the arts are on a precipice. So many venues, actors, theatre practitioners are on the edge, as they simply can’t afford to sit about waiting for this to pass. They’ll need to go and find other ways of earning a living. And the arts have been helping keep us all going. When you can’t get out to these things you realise what a vibrant scene we had, in terms of gigs, theatre, art galleries and studios. It’s going to be hard to get these back.”
