Deacon Blue

It doesn't happen all that often that a cover manages to so faithfully capture the essence, the anger, the poetry, the hopes glimpsed among the grey shades of a sky like Glasgow's, the sense of belonging and attachment to one's own roots as much as the urge to flee that beloved land, from the smoke of the chimneys, from unemployment and from the seemingly endless rain. Because that's exactly the key here, in the shot by Oscar Marzaroli - a Scottish photojournalist (later also a cameraman and director) but originally from northern Italy - who introduces the international audience to the debut album by Deacon Blue.

A name that says it all, affectionately lifted from a Steely Dan song, yet one that contains a far livelier and more layered musical world, one that looks to the songwriting of Van Morrison as much as to the rock elegies of the Boss, with "cultured" streaks that place the band's leader and main songwriter, Ricky Ross, alongside a host of other artists of the same era, from the polished Lloyd Cole to the witty Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera, from the fine craftsman Boo Hewerdine to the brooding James Grant, not to mention the gifted melodist Gary Clark (with whom he would go on to share a career as a hired-gun hitmaker, given that Ross had a hand in writing "High", James Blunt's famous debut single, while the former Danny Wilson man contributed to Natalie Imbruglia's career).

The then twenty-four-year-old Ricky certainly didn't expect to record his creation's debut album at AIR Studios, alongside Jon Kelly - who would shortly afterwards be one of the cooks in the kitchen for Prefab Sprout's "From Langley Park To Memphis" - and with a few guests who, for the time, were pretty top-notch. He certainly hoped that "Raintown" would crack the Top 20 and stay on the UK chart for months, thanks above all to an especially intense run of live shows and some well-chosen radio singles. And he also had a clear vision of the themes, of the way the tracklist would move from ethereal songs to more vigorous ones; well-dressed songs, even if the keyboards used sometimes betray the relentless passing of time, and destined to be the first, brilliant building block of a career that (despite long hiatuses and solo ventures) continues to this day.

And yet none of this was remotely a given back in October 1985, when the singer (then a young supply teacher) found himself walking down Bath Street clutching a letter of dismissal. His dream of offering his music to the world and hearing it on the radio began to take shape the following year, as he met his future bandmates one by one. First Dougie Vipond, then keyboardist and pianist Jim Prime - crucial to the writing of several songs - and finally Graeme Kelling; all that was missing was a second voice for the harmonies. The choice initially fell on Carol Moore, who accompanied Deacon Blue for a few shows, but they later remembered a girl (destined to also become Ricky Ross's life partner) who had already sung at an old audition. The trouble was that Lorraine MacIntosh - that was her name - didn't have a phone number, so they had to track her down in person at her flat on Great Western Road in Glasgow. Once the contract with CBS was signed, a slightly tipsy Dougie ran into Ewen Vernal in the bathroom of a venue and asked him to join the band. The rest, as they always say in these cases, is history.

"Raintown" blends hope and frustration, reflections on current affairs and delicate love stories. Everything unfolds like a film, with "Born In A Storm" (words borrowed by Ross from a friend, David Heavenor) drifting along, graceful, desolate and intangible over an ethereal backdrop worthy of Paul Buchanan's Blue Nile, preceding by a few minutes the title track, with its prominently featured keyboards, its yearning and the perfect interlocking of Ricky and Lorraine's voices in the chorus. The songwriter talks about himself, about a phone call that never comes, about bills to pay, about a job that doesn't exist or that fails to satisfy when it does. Time flies, but certain themes never go out of date. Just as evergreen is the metaphor in "Ragman", written by a Ross not yet jaded by the music business ("I showed her all I had/ she offered me what she had/ she thought that I was a ragman/ She offered goods in her possession/ I tied them with a knot/ wrapped in a note/ I kept them in my pocket").

The storytelling in "He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now" is more complex, yet also more concrete and down-to-earth. Don't be fooled by the actor's name: there's very little "Steve McQueen" here and, by contrast, plenty of Bruce Springsteen (who would be evoked again many times in the years to come). The reflective, confessional Springsteen of "Nebraska" (one of our man's favourite albums), but also of "My Hometown". The man being described is the one who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima ("there's a shadow on his photograph taken at Tinian in '45/ he's smiling like a college boy happy to be alive/ but now he owns a factory and a store in Los Alamos/ he's got a wife, name of Beverly, who sells second-hand Fords"), and the song imagines who he might be today ("a senator, a general.../ but I know he looks like Spencer Tracy now"), the guilt that has gripped him ever since ("and he cries all night"), but also the paradoxes and contradictions he can't shake off ("he may have shook hands with Einstein... 'Did we really need to drop the bomb?' 'You bet we did, to save this world'"... "he could have been a nationalist, a physicist or a pacifist/ but he's just taking pictures and he still will").

Among the singles pulled from the album, "Loaded" has the most unusual genesis. Here there's no starting point in notebook jottings; instead we get a genuine stream of consciousness laid down over a track recorded on an old eight-track (part of the lyric, as the author revealed years later, was lifted wholesale from an evangelical hymn, "Christ is the Answer"!). Elsewhere, the poetic sketches reveal a real attentiveness to the characters who become the unwitting protagonists of these vignettes, giving equal weight to what's on show and what lies beneath the surface, describing their present while keeping an eye on their past so as to clarify the motives behind certain choices, or certain states of mind, with genuine sympathy. Without judging - we'll leave that to ourselves, if we really must.

Take "Dignity", an 80s pop masterpiece that still moves us despite its age and the countless times it's been aired by international networks. Empathetic, deep and elegiac like Springsteen at his most graceful, though its structure recalls "The Whole Of The Moon" by the Waterboys more closely; the song is about a man with a humble job (he works "for the Council", perhaps a street sweeper) who never seems to complain about it. Not even when the children think it's fine to laugh at him. He carries on with dignity and pride, come rain or shine, and his dream is to buy a boat once he retires, and sail up the west coast ("I'll be on holiday, they'll be doing their shift work/ they'll ask me 'how could you afford it?' and I'll tell them 'hey, I saved up for it'/ 'isn't she lovely, this boat called Dignity'").

Pop, rock, piano arpeggios in abundance, sturdy basslines. But there's also room for a track with an unmistakably soulful flavour, a song about love gone wrong, or unrequited, or already fading to the closing credits; "(When Will You) Make My Telephone Ring?" recalls "If You Don't Know Me By Now" by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes in its chord progression as much as "Everytime You Go Away" by Daryl Hall and John Oates in mood, yet it has a charm all its own. Credit goes to the backing vocals of Londonbeat - who just three years later would score a huge hit with "I've Been Thinking About You" - offsetting Ricky Ross's raspy voice and anguished delivery, without ever tipping into self-parody.

Van the Man meets Paddy McAloon (the one behind "Cruel", from the debut album "Swoon", which had already won over Elvis Costello) on "Chocolate Girl", another single familiar even to casual fans. This time the magnifying glass is trained on Alan, rich but emotionally detached, unable to give weight to feelings, accompanied by a spoiled yet unhappy woman ("He calls her his 'chocolate girl'/ because he thinks she melts at his touch").

A production with less hairspray and a more minimal arrangement would have made "The Very Thing" an ideal track - airy yet bittersweet at once - for the follow-up to the Lotus Eaters' "No Sense Of Sin" that we waited for in vain throughout the entire 1980s, while Chris Rea's guitar lends an extra touch to "Love's Great Fears" ("can you see them burn/ twist and turn/ as you walk and learn?"), vaguely comparable to Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good". This track, like the closer "Town To Be Blamed", benefits from Jim Prime's contribution during the writing process; the final song, with its accusatory tone and its hushed, fading ending ("when you're young all you want to do is run away, and blame your town - and the scant opportunities it seems to offer - for everything that goes wrong in your life," Ricky Ross has said. "The first time I saw Graeme Kelling he wanted to get away from Glasgow, but really we wanted to stay. Just in a different position - we wanted to be kings of the hill"), brings "Raintown" to a close in the best possible way, even though early CD editions include two extra songs, "Riches" and "Kings Of The Western World".

Too often people forget just how much good music Deacon Blue produced, and just as quickly they've been shoved into the 80s sophisti-pop cauldron, treated as a kind of B-list Prefab Sprout. Something similar happened to Snow Patrol, perhaps the band that comes closest to Deacon Blue among those to emerge in the last twenty years: the accessibility of their songs made them "inoffensive" to the ears of more demanding listeners (though being cool was never part of their mission).

The truth is that "Raintown" is a record that grows together with the listener, revealing new shades of meaning every year we choose to put the LP back on the turntable, as we gradually manage to "get inside" Ricky Ross's lyrics, each time with a different kind of awareness. A perfect record to start exploring their catalogue, which isn't especially vast (worth mentioning at least the follow-up "When The World Knows Your Name", "The Hipsters" and "City Of Love") but free of filler and glaring missteps.

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18/10/2020