A few years back there was a brief moment when the British music press decided to follow the Kings of Convenience and declare that quiet was the new loud. The record buying public was assured that sweet harmony and bittersweet lyrics were the height of fashion. It was going to be called the ‘new acoustic movement’, and it was set to take over as rock died a miserable death and was lowered into a nu-metal coffin. It was all going to be Starsailor, Turin Breaks, Alfie and some blokes called Coldplay as the last line of defense for ‘real’ music in its battle against the evils of dance and hip-hop.
It couldn’t last long, and it didn’t. Rock came back with vengeance and the rules of fashion changed again. Now the bands that weren’t rock were derided as Coldplay knock-offs. A limpness infected the sound of brit-pop and it meekly retreaded, offering up Keane as the thinnest of paper soldiers. Delays seem to have also taken cues from that brief moment when quiet trumped loud, but they’ve sweetened the mix with a sound as sweet, colourful and finely spun as fairground fairy floss. This is stadium filling romanticism; that gifted with the soaring vocals of chief songwriter Greg Gilbert Delays takes their La’s and Cocteau Twins influenced guitar pop to places that remain dreams for the likes of Starsailor. Greg’s brother, Aaron, also makes his presence felt with his electronic waves and splashes.
The warmth of Delays sound album was born amid a tour that threatened to mark the end of the band. Hiding in the tour van and hotel rooms Delays’ self confessed ‘arrogant control freak’ leader, Greg, had plenty of time to write and reassess his role. He used his reclusive hours to sketch out about 100 songs, which the band recorded to a single demo disc. A single disc that they promptly lost on return to Southampton. It may have been something of a disguised blessing as the band seem to have only remembered the most shimmeringly catchy moments of that lost collection and Greg was forced to rely on the rest of the band to recover the songs. Admittedly it’s less dramatic then the fire that claimed the tapes for the Doves first album, but been forced to start again seems to have similarly revitalised Delays to push for greater heights.
Their blend of shimmering indie pop is as attention grabbingly colourful as been hit square in the face with a full rainbow of gumballs. You and Me opens the album with Greg’s aching falsetto before the band enter – launching the song onto the freeway in an open top car and racing Stereophonics Dakota for the title of most soaring piece of pop bliss. Lead single Valentine flirts with the dance floor with its adrenalised electro pulse. Too Much In Your Life drifts away on a water-colour cloud of choral harmony, while Winter’s Memory of Summer is as stadium ready as anything off the Manic Street Preachers This Is My Truth… album. It’s probably worth noting that this was the era when the Manic’s collaborated with Kylie and a pre-Groovejet stardom Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Delays have also managed to infuse their sound with a soaring pop without compromising their intelligence or ambition. It’s no surprise to find that Delays played with the Manics in 2005 on the Past/Present/Future tour; presumably as the ‘future’ section of the title.
With the British music scene set to deliver a series of black and white photocopies of the Arctic Monkeys, the Delays will provide a colourful pop-up book alternative. It’s likely that they’ll be seeing colours like gold and platinum very soon.
