King Of The Ghost Train Ride
I’ve always been a great admirer of the River Detectives and just like a fine wine, these guys get better and better . . .
Billy Sloan (Radio Clyde DJ & Sunday Mail)
"10 songs and 33 minutes of unaduterated brilliance...
they've delivered the best album of their careers..."
Matt Bendoris (The Scottish Sun)
It's a staggering 13 years since Sam Corry and Dan O'Neill released sophomore album Elvis Has Left The Building, but, four years after calling it a day the Motherwell duo have got back together and dragged themselves back into a studio to record a third. Not a huge amount has changed in the interim, they still make acoustic based folk pop about love and journeys both literal and emotional, rippling with catchy melodies and lines about, well, trains. And they're still pretty damn good too.
A mixture of old songs and new material, some are written about life on the road, some (the Simon & Garfunkle like Capetown To Glasgow especially) about longing for home and some are very specific (Philip concerns a schoolfriend's suicide, I Love Your Love is about Corry's wife, Speedy Mullen's House of Fear relates to a dodgy Belfast IRA watering hole), but all of them testify to the strength of the writing and the harmonies that deliver them. To be honest, it's unlikely to return them to the heights they enjoyed with their silver selling debut album back in 1989, but if The Proclaimers can sustain a healthy career without the benefit of hit singles or albums, there's no reason why the likes of the catchy Blue Collar Love Song or the lovely country heartacher The Dance Is Over shouldn't ensure the river keeps flowing for a while yet.
Mike Davies, Netryhthm.com
