Delays

Delays release their new album ‘You See Colours' on Rough Trade records, the follow-up to the excellent debut ‘Faded Seaside Glamour'.
Recorded with long time producer Graham Sutton in the summer and autumn of 2005, it's a piece of work from a band who have seemingly opened up their sights but have lost that sense of direction they started off with. The first album was a wide open road going straight ahead with a couple of good, memorable restaurants along the way. This gets to a junction with each road full of appealing neon signs but they all look the same and it's hard to chose between them. So you have the heavily orchestrated songs like ‘You And Me' and ‘Winter's Memory Of Summer', the guitar based ‘This Town's Religion' or ‘Too Much In Your Life', the euro disco beat of ‘Valentine' etc etc. These different sounds, all with their characteristic, ney impressive, vocals and vocal harmonies reminiscent of ‘The Byrds', are however shrouded with totally forgettable choruses. For a band that has decided on the pop highway, you have to come up with better choruses and hooks than this.
The drum sound too just sounds flat most of the time and adds to the general dullness. Only on the last 3 songs do I get a hint of the first album's majestic path, with the ‘Supergrass' led ‘Lillian', the best pop song ‘Out of Nowhere' reminding me of ‘The Police's Syncronicity' in style, and the final track ‘Waste of Space' which has the typical melody and delicate guitar of the slower songs of FSG which were so appealing.
They play London's Shepherd's Bush Empire on March 7th and a visit is obligatory. I hope they can buckle up their many ideas and undoubted talent to pull off some success but I can't see this album being the one to set up shop.