I keep meaning to read press releases but I keep forgetting to do so. I certainly had never heard of Blue Rose Code – led by one Ross Wilson – so I approached “Bright Circumstances” with the proverbial blank sheet of paper or, rather, its 21st century equivalent that is the blank Word document.
As it turns out, and after listening to this album it was not that hard to guess, that Blue Rose Code are something of a darling of the nice roots festival audiences and, duly and verily, there is a great deal in the way of polish and polite musical influences on display. This is no bad thing if you want to sell some albums and walking the tightrope to the charts is something that Ross Wilson could easily pull off. There’s even a bit of gaelic thrown to keep the folks at home happy yet, even if you regard the inclusion of aforementioned everything as nothing more than pure contrivance, there is also sufficient evidence that a soul resides beneath all that conventionality and it is a soul that can mix sentimentality, social conscience and even a dash of spirituality into a song lyric.
I do my best to hate albums like this. I really do and, despite the cover of “Amazing Grace” setting my phasers to malky, the rest of album played out with the kind of polish that you would have expected of a Deacon Blue album back in the day. I doubt that many will regard that as a bad thing.
Best song: “Sadie”.
Verdict: Commercial.