I have to say that the most intriguing thing that attracted me to this band was the album cover, an orange soaked psychedelic looking painting of a ship at port in a place that vaguely looks to be somewhere between a European and Caribbean city. Not that you should judge a book by its cover, it does say something relevant about the Delays. Made up of two sets of brothers from England, Greg Gilbert (vocals/guitar), Aaron Gilbert (keyboards), Rowley Fox (drums) and Colin Fox (bass), these guys previously were a Brit-pop band called Corky in the mid-nineties who decided to go 60’s California pop.
On the opening track of Faded Seaside Glamour, “Wanderlust” captures a Caribbean vibe with steel drums that is a great opener. Vocalist Greg Gilbert has a high-pitched melodic Stevie Nicks like delivery that at first is at odds with the music the rest of the band is producing. A few songs in, everything begins to fall into place. On “You Wear the Sun,” the chemistry between acoustic guitars, sprinkles of keyboard and backing vocals seem to double the size of the sweetly sung vocals while adding a nice fireside ambiance to an album that doesn’t vary too much from song to song.
The album concludes with “On,” a very gospel yet smooth sounding song. Though the Delays effort has melodic warmth throughout the whole, because of the lack of variety, the album feels like it drags on a bit longer than it should. The songs sound very similar after a while, mainly due to a very simple formula throughout: light acoustic guitars and accompaniment sweeping over melodic vocals that don’t take any detours. They create a shiny sound with songs that are a bit indifferent. It is a good album yet I wonder how they would sound if they decided to let their hair down and rock out?
What it does successfully is capture not only the vibe of whatever Faded Seaside Glamour might be but also lives up to it’s cover, which comes across as one of the warmest and most honest I’ve seen since The Flaming Lips, Soft Bulletin. You can’t knock a band for having good taste! |