Back in the day, much of the stuff John Peel played I’d first loathe but slowly come to love. (The Fall being the most classic example.) But the Delgados I initially didn’t dislike, I just dismissed. It didn’t seem challenging so much as unmemorable, pretty tunes maybe but no substance, another chip off the indie block. Only by increments did I work my way round to them.
And their music should work that way, should slowly creep up on you. Particularly with their career-highlight album ’Peloton’ they managed to pull off the same magic trick as the later Velvets, without ever sounding imitative of them. They often start off with a simple melodic line, only to mess with it. Lyrics are at once erudite and elusive, hinting at dark deeds which couldn’t be spoken of openly. Remember that soporific drink that Mia Farrow’s made to sup in ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, the one where she complains about the undertaste? Delgados songs are similar, initially sounding sweet but gradually revealing a bitter residue. As John Cale once said, “a nice way of saying something nasty.”
Or, in another analogy, imagine spotting an invitingly clear blue pool. Only after jumping in do you realise that serene surface actually masks a myriad of undercurrents. Listening, you tend to get tangled up within them.
They formed after they being ejected en masse from another band, but deciding to carry on regardless. As this left them short on numbers, drummer Paul Savage enlisted his then girlfriend Emma Pollock. Who naturally went on to become one of the two main songwriters.
Their first album ’Domestiques’ (1996) admittedly did sound for the most part like another John Peel band, people who’d listened to lots of the Velvets and Sonic Youth. But with positives. Songs were fast, sprightly, full of vim and infectious humour. One chorus goes: “What’s your middle name?/ I haven’t got one.”
’Peloton’ (1998) was only their second release, as if the Beatles had jumped straight from ’Hard Day’s Night’ to ’Revolver.’ The songwriting, chiefly by Pollock and Alun Woodward, matured and became more idiosyncratic. Songs sound no longer like they’ve been thrown up in a gust of youthful enthusiasm but precisely calibrated, as if they’d been built by a watchmaker. Elements enter and leave the arrangement at sharply defined moments, sometimes of only a few seconds in length.
There had been strings on ’Domestiques’. But their greater use on the follow-up seems based, as so often, on happenstance. Asked to play an acoustic gig they decided on getting in some accompanists, bassist Stuart Henderson bumping into someone he knew at a bus stop.
With ‘The Great Eastern’ (2000) and particularly with it’s follow-up ’Hate’ (2002) the strings and brass expanded. Their Peel Sessions act as a kind of timeline. The second, from 1996, drafts in a violin. By the fifth, in 2000, there’s three of them, plus a viola, a cello, a piano and a flute.
’Hate’ opens with a choir, as if setting out its stall early. Heard on its own, it sounds magnificent, and there are some sensational tracks on the albums. But heard after ’Peloton’, it’s hard to shake the feeling something more special and unique has been over-written. Graham Greene once said a writer must have a sliver of ice at his heart. Their later output is richer and fuller, but it all starts to melt that sliver of ice. The strings which had punctuated the sound now come to enrich it. The same track to start with the choir, ‘The Light Before We Land’, includes the lines “Remind me how we used to feel/ Before when life was real.”
And another thing… As the Guardian’s Dave Simpson wrote in a live review: “The vocal interplay between pure-voiced tomboy Emma Pollock and introspective pretty boy Alun Woodward is especially stunning.” And yet by ’Hate’ they’d come to drop that interplay altogether.
Their own description of ‘Universal Audio’ (2004) was “we had pretty much come round full circle and had dispensed with our… orchestra, trying to keep the songs as simple and upbeat as possible.” The seventh and final Peel session for that album not only dispensed with the extra instruments, it was acoustic.
Wait a second - upbeat? Did those doleful Scottish indie kids just say upbeat? Yes, they did. And they really were. The shift had in fact been presaged by some of the tracks from ’Hate’, such as ’Coming In From the Cold’ - a toast to carefree summertime adventuring:
”Raise your glass
”We're going to drink now till the summer's past
”So bring the hats out, we all need a laugh
”And let the neighbours talk”
(Though, appealingly, the sliver of ice never entirely melted. Pretty soon Pollock is slipping in lines like “Not to blame/ No-one’s telling you you’re not to blame.”)
Now everyone thinks of us anti-social alternative music fans reacting to commercial success like vampires to sunlight, retreating to the refuge of early Throbbing Gristle demos. But if a band can pull off a hit song while still sounding great, that’s something to celebrate. I can still remember how exhilarating it was to see the Smiths storming ‘Top of the Pops’ way back when. And it would have been as awesome to see ’Coming In From the Cold’ climb the charts. In this interview Pollock effectively says that cult had become confining: “It's not just about success. It's about the feeling that what you're doing has been received well by as many people as possible.”
This site explains that “they dismembered in 2005 after disputes.” The truth was slightly less painful than that sounds. Well, slightly. The thing was… however deserved success may have been, the hits never came. At least not in this world. Henderson caused the split, commenting he couldn’t continue "to pour so much of my energy and time into something that never quite seemed to get the attention or respect I felt it deserved." (A statement that, through running this blog, I in no way relate to.)
But in a way, all that’s appropriate. Like a stubborn stain that won’t scrub out, even for a shirt you want to wear for your Saturday night, melancholy couldn’t be removed from the Delgados story.
‘Pull the Wires From the Wall’, off ’Peloton’, which made John Peel’s All-Time Festive Fifty in 2000…
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