Corned Beef Should Not Be Blue Love him or hate him, Woody Allen is one of America’s most prominent filmmakers.  This month, we look at some particularly controversial titles in the Woody Allen canon.  Plus… The Woody Allen Theft Guide.

Got It Made Singer-songwriter Greg Trooper talks with Zayne Reeves about his new album, working with Dan Penn and life in Nashville.

With Kaleidoscope Eyes: An Abridged History of Art Under The Influence Brighid Mooney chronicles the influence drugs have had on music, film, literature, and art.  “Far out, man!”

Casey Comes Clean Stephen Gill catches up with Ken Casey, founding member and bass player of Boston’s beloved The Dropkick Murphys.

Damn The Torpedoes: Matt Mays & El Torpedo Matt Mays took some time out of his busy schedule on tour with Blue Rodeo to answer a few of Adam M. Anklewicz’s questions.

The Music Made Them Do It – The Intersection of Film and Music Lisa Hood-Anklewicz looks at music and the important role it has played in cinema, both past and present.

Pull The Wires From The Wall Dan Crosby bids farewell to one of Scotland’s great bands, the recently disbanded Delgados.

Pull the Wires from the Wall
By Dan Crosby

The sad news arrived by email on Friday morning, April 8th. The Delgados were breaking up, after ten years among Scotland’s most critically acclaimed, if not most popular, bands.  There is no great drama to report with this breakup, no stories of rehab, infighting or “artistic differences.” By all accounts, Emma Pollock, Alun Woodward, Stewart Henderson and Paul Savage remain close friends and will continue work for the Glasgow-based label, Chemikal Underground, that they began and still run. No, this is just another story of a fantastic band that never won commercial success. And it’s a damned shame.

Between the initial announcement from the band and subsequent postings by Pollock and Henderson on the band’s web site (www.delgados.co.uk), it seems that Henderson could no longer continue to invest the emotional and financial effort needed to make another album. The Delgados long had an agreement that as “uniquely collaborative songwriters,” they could not continue as a band if any of the four were to leave; this January, therefore, they decided to part ways. The Delgados may be the first band to split due to the departure of a bassist—a touching display, perhaps, of the band members’ respect for one another.

I won’t pretend to have followed the Delgados from their early days. I readily admit that I was not introduced to the band until 2001, around the time of their fourth album.  This, however, may be the best time to discover a new band—after they have already produced a corpus of music. It didn’t take me long to acquire the band’s entire back catalog, including many of the singles, and I caught them live in their spring 2002 Hate tour, and again in fall 2004 to promote their fifth album, Universal Audio. If you never got a chance to see the Delgados live—and let’s face it, far too few saw them when they did tour—you missed an amazing show. In the studio, the Delgados were known for a rich, orchestral sound, complete with strings, harps, and flutes.  Their live performances kept all this, along with the energy and intensity of a live rock band. Undoubtedly this sounds odd if you haven’t heard it, but it could be majestic.

 

The garage band

The Delgados’ early singles and first album, Domestiques (1997), have all the raucous, disorganized simplicity of a garage band, with only hints of the band’s later sophistication. Only Pollock and Woodward, both guitarists, played their instruments before the band started.  Savage and Henderson were friends of Woodward’s who played with him with another band, learning drums and bass, respectively, as they went. When that band broke up, they brought in Pollock, who was then Savage’s girlfriend; they are now married.

The singles and B-sides of this period range from amateurish—“Booker T Jones”—to the unbridled release of raw energy—“Een Telf”—to some gems with real polish—“The Dirge.” I don’t think any Delgados fan considers either Domestiques or the BBC Sessions live CD from the same period to be the band’s best record, but both are worth a listen. This was a new band having fun, and it’s delightfully easy to have fun along with them. “Strathcona Slung” and “Tempered, Not Tamed,” especially the live version of the latter, are great songs. If you’re heard their later albums, the early version of “Thirteen Gliding Principles” will be at once new and familiar.

Originally there was no North American release of Domestiques, but they finally made it available here in 2003 with bonus tracks. BBC Sessions and their early singles are still more expensive or difficult to find in this hemisphere, but worth it for the serious fan. If you’re new to the Delgados, you can safely leave all these until you’ve acquired their more polished later work.

 

The Delgados sound

The Delgados really developed their signature sound with their next two records, Peloton (1998) and The Great Eastern (2000). These albums begin to bring in several credited additional musicians on string and wind instruments, while keeping the guitars and vocals firmly at the center of attention. While it’s easy to talk about the extra instruments as marking the real break from the Domestiques sound, perhaps even more important is the Delgados’ evident discovery that both of their guitarists have very distinctive singing voices. Mostly gone is the alt-rock angsty shouting that marks too many 90s bands, and some nice melodic vocals come in to replace it.

My own favorite Delgados songs are mostly from this period, especially the gorgeous “Pull the Wires From The Wall.” “American Trilogy,” “And So The Talking Stopped,” the final, polished version of “Thirteen Gliding Principles,” and the song that first got me into the Delgados, “Accused of Stealing,” also appear here. And by the way, if you haven’t a clue what these song titles might mean, in most cases neither do I. The titles and lyrics from these two albums have a mysterious, almost fairy-tale quality that fits perfectly with the airy style of their unusual collection of instruments. I suspect this is largely a happy consequence of the collaborative songwriting style of Woodward and Pollock.

The tight integration with so many artists and instruments made for a live experience unlike any other. It also meant a large and expensive tour ensemble—violins, a cello, a flute, a harp. Some of these extra folks, most notably the cellist and pianist Alan Barr, performed with the Delgados often enough, both live and in the studio, that they were practically members of the band themselves.

Unfortunately, the Live at the Fruitmarket (2001) CD that is available from their web site has unacceptably bad sound quality and doesn’t come close to recreating the experience. Peloton and The Great Eastern, on the other hand, are absolute essentials and a great way to discover the band. If you’re looking for still more, it’s worth tracking down the “No Danger” single, which (unlike the album version) integrates a children’s choir with much better effect than one might guess.

 

Cynicism and the wall of sound

If the last two albums saw the Delgados exploring a new style, Hate (2002) saw that style taken to extremes. The dancing instruments that seemed to invite you closer before, now seemed to blast at you in a wall-of-sound style. The guitars are now pushed to the background a bit, and the vocals are often eerily and deliberately distorted. From the first track, Hate demands a lot from the listener without being unpleasant. Hate more clearly has something to say, as well, as the title of the album and some of the tracks (“All You Need Is Hate”, “Child Killers”) might imply.

The result is a sort of tour de force for the Delgados sound. “All You Need is Hate,” “Coming in from the Cold,” and “If This Is A Plan” are the most memorable, but really, there isn’t a bad song on the album. To be sure, Hate is an album that sets a mood, and sometimes you just aren’t ready for the rush of noise in “All Rise” or “The Light Before We Land.” The lyrics, too, are a far cry from the lighthearted spirit of even the melancholy songs of the last two albums. One is never quite sure what to make of Woodward’s happy, sing-song voice chirping out “Hate is everywhere, inside your mother’s heart and you will find it there… We kicked and punched and stabbed to death, and everyone applauded my fine actions I was overcome….”

It was during the Delgados’ Hate tour in 2002 that I first was able to experience their live show, at the El Rey theater in Hollywood, and it was amazing. The El Rey is an old, storied venue that looks more like a place for a 1920s concert than a 2002 show, but somehow it’s just right for a live show with a small but enthusiastic crowd. While Pollock and Woodward, standing up front, never seemed quite comfortable dealing with their American fans, they nonetheless were a formidable presence. Henderson, on the other hand, was more than comfortable, especially after displaying and consuming an intimidating assortment of hard liquor. And then, of course, there was the music itself. It might seem impossible to recreate the Delgados’ studio sound in a live show, especially the big sound of Hate, but they did so magnificently. I got to meet Woodward and Henderson after the show, and both were warm, friendly, and excited to have an enthusiastic reception.

Hate may be the most popular Delgados album, among fans and critics alike. Personally, I’d recommend adding the last two to your collection first, to get a feel for the sound before you get drowned in it.

 

The End…

Before the release of the Delgados’ fifth and final album, Universal Audio (2005), they referred to it as their “pop” album. They were moving away from the big, wall-of-sound approach of Hate, using fewer instruments and focusing on simpler guitar and vocal pieces. Some of their fan base rebelled against the changes, and Universal Audio is not their best album, but it is a good one. I’ve written my own thoughts on it for BT before and won’t repeat myself now. Suffice it to say that if the Delgados made this move in an effort to gain new listeners, it was a failure; it didn’t win them the financial success that they deserved.

The tour that followed the release of the album was again great fun. They played here at the El Rey again, and this time I was able to interview Pollock and Woodward for BT, and spoke with Henderson and Savage unofficially, as well. They all seemed happy with the performance and the audience; I certainly had no clue that the band was in its last months. They were traveling with a smaller entourage this time, thanks to the more guitar-centric sounds of Universal Audio, which meant they couldn’t play some bits of their older catalog, but this didn’t detract from the experience.

 

and beyond

So we’ve reached the end of the Delgados as a band. But wait: we will be hearing more from them. Woodward and Pollock, the band’s principal songwriters and vocalists, will each be pursuing solo projects, while Savage and Henderson are planning to record and tour with Chemikal’s Malcolm Middleton. We may even get another release from them together: there are rumors of a CD of some of their otherwise unavailable singles and B-sides, possibly later this year or 2006.

I wish I could sound more hopeful, with grand ideas about a reunion tour or even a re-forming of the band. Such things are always possible, especially since all four are likely to remain personally and professionally close. Let’s not fool ourselves, though. Despite the incredible enthusiasm they met from the fans that came to their shows, the Delgados were rarely able to pack their small venues in North America even at their peak. No, the best thing to do now is to take the advice they themselves gave in their farewell message: “get a massive carry out, turn the stereo up and play your albums at full volume.” If you don’t have any of their albums, go buy one, now: you can’t go wrong with Peloton, The Great Eastern, or Hate, anyway. They were a great band. Glory in what we still have of them.

© 2004-2005, Being There Media. This is a copyright statement. Don't steal me.