Delicatessen
Skin Touching Water

In this episode of "Rediscovering 90s Britpop", we will delve into the dark recesses of Britpop, the semi-unknown and strange corners of England from the last decade...
I am talking, ladies and gentlemen, about Delicatessen. Who doesn't know them? (who does, please raise your hand!)

The aforementioned group hails from the heart of England, a city now famous for Kasabian (who have little in common with their music): I am talking about Leicester.
The music of Delicatessen is characterized by visionary lyrics and music that are very dark and psychedelic. A little-known but very unique group.

The lineup includes: Neil Carlill (guitar and vocals), Craig Bown (guitar), Will Foster (bass) and Stuart Dayman (drums). This Skin Touching Water (1995) is their debut album and, in my opinion, still their most successful album, indeed, a masterpiece of the 90s music that has unjustly never been made famous. Therefore, I recommend all lovers of psychedelic britpop shoegaze to quickly get their hands on this album; it might tempt your senses, trust me!
Delicatessen could be framed in the shoegaze scene of bands like Ride, for example, but perhaps they express something more by creating melodies that are both edgy but concrete and sweet in their own way. Thus playing with anti-commercial and catchy sounds.

The songs on this album amount to sixteen, and each has its own identity and uniqueness, creating fifty perfectly enjoyable minutes of music, though quite challenging for the ears.
It begins with "I'm Just Alive" that keeps spinning with a shrill organ and a guitar with fairly strained feedbacks, accompanied by an incessant drum rhythm and Carlill’s voice, which is reverberated and also baritone and quite dark like a whisper from Lou Reed in our ears. It is followed by the extraordinary "C.F. Kane" with a slightly jazzy rhythm, very intriguing with not bad guitar fabrics, Carlill's voice continues to not betray, getting hoarse and even increasing in tone in the refrain, until creating pure white noise.
Then follows the trio "Zebra"/"Monkey"/"Liar": Zebra is a caustic song full of feedback and mess with little melody that remains tucked away in the background, Monkey instead makes room for intriguing bass and the vexed melody of some rainy evening outside a pub, and so it goes with the singer's out-of-tune voice, always particular, standing out. The entrance of the guitar then gifts us a "spy-story" style soundscape and the inevitable baton-passing to the manic Liar: suddenly speeding up, the noise turns white, the brain splatters blood on the wall and everything ends. A true shot to the head!
"Red, blue & Green" paints bucolic landscapes with the help of winds and violins, a sweet piano accompanies, bringing catchiness back, the melody, but always giving the impression of something being choked in the background without being able to give its best. Carlill's voice strains and continues to want to be sweet forcibly, but not of his own will. The peculiar blues-rock, all its own program of "Watercress", gives us a bit of the idea of some b-side from the departed Verve (their sound companions in some way). Everything seems to emerge in a nightmarish atmosphere, like the slightly hefty skit of "Appeased" (not intended as a pun). The free-jazz that returns in "Chomsky". The quartet of quirky titles represented by the quirky "You Cut my Throat, I'll Cut Yours", the nightmare carousel of "Sick of Flying Saucers" and the slightly Beatlesque "Smiling, you're stupid", and finally the acoustic "Inviting Both of Sister out to Dinner". Don't miss the voice-piano transition in "Advice". The attempt at catchiness again with "Love's Liquid" ends "badly". These Delicatessen manage to be unique, alone, and unrepeatable absolutely resisting any comparisons with other groups, and they do so again with the concluding "If She Was Anybody Else", a slow, depressive and solitary song, for hardcore drinkers, a last breath, as if something might suddenly fail, like the imminent end of something. Skin Touching Water ends. Leaving us with so much and this time...
... with the awareness of having changed us, of having changed our musical compass and  of having given us something, of having truly given us so much.