Reviewed by Dougie Adam

"Here's a song to the Maker/Maybe the rest are all display." So begins this bitter sweet and weathered celebration of life with some of Ross's finest ever love songs ("In This World" and "Kichijoji" - on both recordings Ricky lets the Van Morrison influence shine through as never before), a celebration (that word again) of the joys of ordinary family life with rainy Saturdays and mess left by children waiting to be cleared up ("I Know It's Only Sunday"). "Boys Break The Things They Love The Most" wryly observes male tendencies from birth to death for searching for treasure, making secret plans and "taking love to bits again/trying to get it fixed/then failing to be a man." In "She Gets Me Inside" and "Soundtrack To The Summer" we have the kind of instantly likeable pop songs that would have sent these songs Top 20 had they dated from a previous era in his musical career. And while Ricky has never sounded so content or so at peace, a number of songs touch on mortality ("Pale Rider") and illness and death and yet even where this is the case those songs still come out sounding like a celebration. "In The End" recalls Deacon Blue guitarist Graeme Kelling's last night on earth in a hospice and begins with a picture of Ricky and Graeme looking at old photos and sharing laughs of their time together in the band before Graeme fell asleep for the last time. The chorus "Sun goes down/and the stars come out/and the world keeps on turning/in the end" could be fatalistic if not for the observations in verse two, "I know you couldn't see/but I was there to watch you sleep/and I figured out Jesus was wanting you more" which could go down as one of the sharpest observations in a pop song of what is happening when a person dies and passes from one life to the next. No review would be complete without saying that there are times when the way a song is played and sung give as much pleasure and ring out as much meaning as the quality of the songwriting - "In The End" with its simple piano arrangement is a case in point. The emotional ante is upped considerably as modern bleepy sounds which sound out of place at first simulate a life support machine doing its desperate work as drums quietly shuffle in and suggest a pulsing heartbeat fighting for life as high synth sounds soar heavenward as the first chorus closes. Heartbreaking and strangely uplifting stuff at one and the same time. Davie Scott's production is first rate as some songs are left with a lone guitar and some harmony vocals where it is deemed a full band sound on these tracks might get intrusive while elsewhere shimmering guitars, glockenspiels, mandolins, brass, strings and summery harmonies come in at just the right time to take a song forward. On 'Pale Rider' Ricky Ross continues a rich vein of form and writes succinctly and powerfully about a whole range of issues to do with ordinary life. In "Calvary" where Ricky is partly protesting about a tendency to celebrate Christmas by saying Jesus was born simply to be a sacrificial offering on a cross at Easter we find these great words, "The baby comes/folks don't sleep/those shepherds keep you up later than you meant to be/one child grows and people notice/he's breaking chains/and making poor folks' lives so heavenly/(the way it's meant to be).'" Whether he's singing about his love for his wife and family, looking back at friendships and people drifting apart over the passing years, or facing his mortality and grieving the loss of a friend or meditating on what Christmas means to him the whole shooting match seems to come under the umbrella of those opening lines. "Here's a song to the Maker/Maybe the rest are all display."

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