Concert: @DeaconBlueMusic – Waterfront Hall 19th September

Olympia Theatre Dublin – Wednesday 18th September

Waterfront Hall Belfast – Thursday 19th September

**Tickets prices from €39.05 Dublin, £30 Belfast, go on sale this Friday at 9am**
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, the band’s hit single ‘Real Gone Kid’ is 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, which went Top 20 in September 2012, 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.”

Last year the band celebrated 25 years since the release of their debut album, Raintown, when 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.

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.” 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, 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. With a sold out UK tour under their belts and The Hipsters going Top 20 in the UK album charts, Deacon Blue are back as strong and sure as they have ever been.

Deacon Blue will play the Olympia Theatre on Wednesday 18th September & Waterfront Hall Belfast on Thursday 19th September. Tickets prices from €39.05 (Dublin) & £30 (Belfast), go on sale Friday 21st June from www.ticketmaster.ie and Ticketmaster outlets nationwide, www.ulsterhall.co.uk, Ulster Hall & Waterfront Hall Box Offices (02890334400)