Recorded at Vanløse Stairway, Denmark.
It’s a surprise, but a very pleasant one, that at my advanced age I can still get excited about the pending release of an album, or a tour, (or preferably both) by a band I love. Last time the Classic Clips finger pointed my way it was The Long Ryders, this time it’s The Delines. With the new album “Mr Luck and Ms Doom” due any moment as I write this and tickets for their April show in Bristol in the bag, I’m now ready for another slice of Willy Vlautin’s storytelling.
His songs and novels often seem to bleed together with characters from one identifiable in the other. Apparently, singer Amy Boone asked if just for once she could have a conventional love song to sing. I’m pleased to say she didn’t get her way with ‘Maureen’s Gone Missing.’ When the opening line is “First it was a man with missing fingers,” you know you are on familiar Vlautin territory. A typical Cory Gray electric piano solo, and an insistent groove set up by Sean Oldham and bassist Freddy Trujillo which as close to danceable as The Delines get, make this a song that stood out when they played it on last summer’s UK tour, and according to this video as far back as 2022, at a Copenhagen club date.
The tale the song tells is a beautifully observed vignette about a less than reliable friend, where the narrator gets to pick up the pieces left by her sudden departure. The payoff at the end of the song, which doesn’t get old no matter how often you hear it, is in the best short story traditions.
Some bands find it hard to translate such an individual sound and approach to songs to a live setting. But The Delines manage to make each song into an event that draws the audience into their world. Having joined that world with “The Sea Drift” and heard many of the earlier songs for the first time live rather than on the albums, I now find that I can feel the atmosphere they create in their gigs when I play the studio versions.’ The Oil Rigs At Night,’ is not often mentioned as one of their standout songs, but the performance of it at The Fleece in 2022 left it as one of my favourites. It’s also strange that a band that plays at a less than frenetic tempo goes down so well in standing venues. That has a lot to do with the magnetic performance of Amy Boone, and the quiet intensity that her bandmates bring to their playing. It doesn’t hurt that Freddy Trujillo has the coolest stage presence in the universe.
Anyway, I’m now impatiently waiting for April 1st when they land in Bristol, and to hear the new album in full. The fact that after more years than I can remember, I can still get this excited by music and that it remains one of the great shared joys in life is just brilliant, long may that, and The Delines, continue.
