The Delays
You See Colours

THE REVIEW

Shoegaze-Disco? New Power-Pop? Post-Post-New Wave? Electro-Rock’n’Roll? It would be interesting to conduct a poll to find the definition that best fits the sound of the new album by Delays, four young English lads, endowed with undisputed talent and little geniuses of the new 'pop' revolution from across the Channel.

“You See Colours”, starting from the amazing cover (very New Order-esque, but also similar to some productions by 23 Envelope, creators of the artwork for 4AD), marks the consecration of the band, after a raw “Faded Seaside Glamour” that took the four on tour throughout Europe for a year in 2004, alongside the more fortunate Keane.
Eleven pop songs, anything but conventional, form the backbone of the work, where Greg Gilbert's falsetto voice (very reminiscent of Scott Miller's vocal tone of the fondly remembered Game Theory, a very popular American band in late '80s College Radios), weaves its patterns over multicolored guitar arpeggios and electronic rhythms almost akin to 80s techno-disco.
The opening of “You And Me” might be deceiving. A folk whisper almost like Nick Drake and then a breathtaking rhythmic attack with beautiful guitars that climb and unravel along the song's highly melodic structure, growing ever more intense towards the end. It continues with “Valentine”… a "Pro-gen" style attack reminiscent of the Shamen and a celestial singing as if the Cocteau Twins met with Giorgio Moroder in Ibiza for an unlikely jam-session… and then an abundance of shoegazing guitars at will with an incredible melodic opening for one of the most infectious songs of 2006.
And then: “This Town’s Religion”, psychedelic electro-rock, very Game Theory melody, with 80s new wave influences; “Sink Like A Stone”, “Hideaway” and “Winter’s Memory Of Summer”, celestial shoegazing rides among Lush, Pale Saints, and why not?... Stone Roses; “Too Much In Your Life”, rollingstonian and suspended between reality and nocturnal psychedelic suggestions; “Given Time” a beautiful evanescent ballad between pop and wave with a refrain close to the most intense works of the Lotus Eaters (another historic cult band that emerged in the mid-80s that brought back the guitar sound of the new wave era); “Lillian” where Iggy Pop seems to have smoothed out certain rough edges and discovered Nick Drake; “Out Of Nowhere”, psychedelic pop, Byrds-like to the core and close to Primal Scream of “Sonic Flower Groove”; finally, “Waste Of Space”, a delicate and crepuscular ballad with slightly Radiohead-esque melancholic tones for a more than fitting conclusion.

The conclusion must be: full marks to Delays and their global kaleidoscope of sounds.