The Delgados - 'Universal Audio' (Chemikal Underground)
5/5
By: Toby L
'Universal Audio': The Delgados' conceited stab at pop.
They've failed. Oh, how they've gloriously, sumptuously failed. After all, Scotland's The Delgados are far, exceedingly beyond that most straightforward, structured, insipid, contrived of genres.
'UA' is their fifth album, and - very possibly - their finest. That's saying something. Let's reacquaint ourselves - a Dave Fridmann-produced clutch of records - 2000's sublime, uplifting and just mildly expansive 'The Great Eastern' LP; 2002's downward-glancing, haunting 'Hate'; and two cracking debuts - 'Domestiques' and 'Peloton', respectively: Peelie faves, and an indier-than-thou outset to what would soon be a most endearing of formulae; Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock's twinned, straight-delivery vocal-accompaniment and hard strumming, drummer Paul Savage's sweeping, percussive grasp, and bassist Stewart Henderson's, er, exuberance.
For their latest, it's a true departure, yet a leap that marks the foursome's coming into their own - eleven, elevating compositions that warm and glow upon immediate exposure. It begins with the crackling guitar of 'I Fought The Angels', proceeds with the keyboard bounce of 'Is This All That I Came For?' and hits a high with the shamelessly euphoric 'Everybody Come Down' - like The Breeders whacked up to the eyeballs on laughing-gas. Then the piano-creeping 'Come Undone' and the determined country/rock rabble of 'Get Action!'. And it's all quite intoxicating.
Most markedly, this is a band no longer drenching songs within accelerated orchestration; it's instead a case of finding the song, and pushing it to the fore without exhausting the final product. For one, it must've been a f**k-load cheaper to make. And, another, it must've been that much more rewarding - a lack of compulsion to 'develop' via outside means other than the band's own unit - itself a force competent and visionary enough to satisfy without a pit-full of strings.
The second half of LP#5 continues the theme - 'Sink Or Swim' is slight and features Pollock's most accessible vocal to date, with interwoven digital bleepy noises all the while, 'The City Consumes Us' is lingering, brittle and Sigur Ros-like in its understated haunts ('Faced with banality/I choose calamity'), before it reaches a tender choral slumber, 'Girls Of Valour' is harmonic like a choir in its multi-tracked fog, and 'Keep On Breathing' opens with sampled Spanish-ish acoustica and descends into an avalanche of medieval folk pastures. A closing 'Now And Forever' serves as the true swansong - caked as it is in harps and organ, soon exploding into a trademark Delgados cacophony.
And how we got to this? Through a doing away of the imagery of black angels, a Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips producer, and luscious string-arrangements. Leaving the true gold - a quartet stridently reaching their peak, and leaving nigh-on everyone in a thickening cloud of dust below.
Artists in this article: The Delgados
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