This was the final date of a brief tour, built around an appearance at Black Deer Festival the previous day. With only five shows the band were very much in “lets have fun with it” mode. With no new music to promote they pulled out some less played songs.
Opening with ‘Little Earl’, lead song of“The Sea Drift’” and ‘He Don’t Burn For Me’, one of the standout songs from “The Imperial”, they set a high bar for the rest of the show. Amy Boone’s announcement of a new album coming in 2025 was greeted with cheers. Two songs that seem likely to appear on it, ‘Maureen’s Gone Missing’ and ‘Don’t Miss Your Bus Lorraine’ ,suggest that the impossibly high quality of their albums won’t slip on number four. February seems like a very long time away now. ‘Maureen’s Gone Missing’ has a particularly compelling groove with Sean Oldham’s delicate work and Cory’s Gray’s piano particularly good. Gray especially had an exceptional gig, the trumpet solo on ‘He Don’t Burn For Me’ was a thing of wonder. But this was The Delines on top form. Willy Vlautin turned to Amy Boone at one point to tell her she was singing particularly well, and that was hard to argue with. A song that may well be called ‘The Shakes’ was just being worked into the set and will probably appear on the album after next.
Boone reminded us that “Colfax” is 10 years old this year and they played ‘Colfax Avenue’ to celebrate. Later in the set they pulled out ‘All Along the Ride’ one of “The Sea Drift’s” most atmospheric songs, turning it into a set highlight. ‘Walking To Tell Jack’ was lifted from the soundtrack to Wily Vlautin’s novel “The Night Always Comes” and ‘My Blood Bleeds The Darkest Blue’ from “The Lost Duets” single. The set closed with ‘Drowning in Plain Sight’ but an encore was inevitable and we had two more songs from “The Imperial”, ‘Waiting on the Blue’ and closing song ‘Let’s Be Us Again.’ In between they played another new song, ‘Left Hook Like Frazier,’ which sent the audience away from another excellent show from a superb band to wait as patiently as possible for the new album.
Support on the night came from Delines’ bass player Freddy Trujillo showcasing some songs from his latest album, “I Never Threw A Shadow At It”. Starting with the Willy Vlautin co-write ‘Corpus Christi’ he also played the title song and some earlier songs, ‘Film I’ve Never Seen and ‘Mexican Heart.’ He shared his love of bird watching and played the set’s highlight Canyon Wren.’
