Delays: Live Review

2008-03-05 09:06:37

There is a lot to be said for those bands that, while lacking in the ability to wow and thrill an audience, have an unerring ability to gently tease the right musical hormones from each individual in the crowd. The quirky flavour produced by The Delays hit Nottingham with the mission of achieving just that.
    
To a sell-out crowd at the intimate upstairs bar in the Social, which with every gig seems to continue its inexorable slide towards having the pungent smell of any excellent venue, the Southampton band managed to produce “shut-eye” music – not the sort that bores its audience to sleep, but rather a variety aimed at enticing the crowd to close their eyes to shut off from everything but the eclectic tones coming from the stage.
    
After the entertainingly weird support offered by Scarlet Soho, the Southampton band gave the Social more than a taste of third album Everything’s the Rush blended in with some crowd-pleasing old favourites. Out of the new songs, Hooray is perhaps the most likely to succeed, as it somehow manages to simultaneously sound like a football chant and an 80s ballad. Love Made Visible, the only single to be released from the new album, takes some getting used to but is ultimately an audible pleasure.
    
But Embrace didn’t sing Come Back to What You Know without good reason, and it was
those songs already festooned in the crowd’s memory that were to produce the biggest cheers of the night. Long Time Coming brought the band’s greatest enthusiasts the furthest out of their shells, while anyone walking into The Social during Valentine could have been forgiven for thinking that a cheese night had switched venues from Ocean. Certainly, after the euphoria that closed the song had died down, I half expected Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 be the next song of choice.
    
Ultimately, the experience of The Delays proved a pleasurable one. Their brand of electro-pop, soft indie and techno trance may be hard to define, but they make for an enjoyable night out, albeit one where the chilled out atmosphere of the gig means that this will be one easy musical hangover to shake off.
    
Review: Adam Harwood
    

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