Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
A sweet ballad to our journey, that is how we should be able to look back upon the road we have travelled, with poignancy, with affection, and with the occasional pair of tinted glasses that scrub out the worst moments of life when the moment and the muse were missing from our side; or the times when we found ourselves in melancholic ‘let’s remember’ and being terrified with an intensity of longing; that is the sum of our life as we drive along the highway to the music created and which gave our life meaning, purpose, and pleasure.
There is always more music to come, more memories that rise to the surface, and even when we think we have reached a final destination, the truth is revealed that the music keep coming, the road never allows us to finish and our time on Earth becomes just a little bit more documented.
In 2023, Deacon Blue released all their albums once again in the superb boxset titled You Can Have It All, and it showed the band rightly as a powerhouse of the genre, an enduring figure in the pop rock world that captivated and endeared itself to the mind of the listener, and perhaps it could be argued with such an in depth release that for some the end could have seen as going out with a bang, with the force of a star exploding in the sky that leaves an imprint for the world to witness just how colossal it was, how mighty, how illuminating, and yet for Deacon Blue The Great Western Road where it all began calls once more and in return the vehicle of life has more memories to place on the map of life.
Embedded with its own autobiographical sphere, The Great Western Road is an unexpected pleasure of time, to be able to look back where you have come from, to see how far your body and your legacy have taken you is a privilege, and it is no less that for the listener as they climb on the passenger seat alongside Ricky Ross, Lorraine McIntosh, James Prime, Dougie Vipond, Gregor Philp, and Lewis Gordon, and allow themselves to be serenaded in style and reminisce through tracks such as Late 88, Wait On Me, the excellent Underneath The Stars, Mid Century Modern, and the song that gives the album its prestige, Great Western Road fill the air with drama and the unfolding of a past yet to viewed.
With additional, and luxurious support from The Pumpkin Seeds and various meticulous musicians adding depth and drama to the proceedings, The Great Western Road is an album of sincere reflection, a beginning perhaps of a new journey undertaken by the persistence of love and bringing understanding of the experiences to the wider public’s attention.
A return, the map starts afresh, but with homage to that which started the imagination flowing, Deacon Blue remain one of Britain’s finest ambassadors to the art of music.
Ian D. Hall