The Delgados: The Great Eastern

By Sam Engel

Two summers ago, I stumbled upon the Delgados' Peloton. Its highly melodic pop, both intimate and grand (often simultaneously), won me over immediately, and I soon owned all but a handful of the songs that they had recorded. Their first album, Domestiques, had a more jagged feel but was still a splendid effort. And now, with their third LP, The Great Eastern, the Delgados have continued their musical progression to its logical conclusion, reconciling the various styles of their earlier songs.

Some people have found fault with this reworking, but to my ears it works superbly. The Great Eastern is exquisitely crafted, swelling to great heights before dropping out from under you in its darkest moments. Situating themselves in strings-and-woodwinds territory with the help of über-indie-producer Dave Fridmann (Elf Power, The Flaming Lips), the Delgados have made one of the year's most beautiful records. However, it would be doing the band a disservice to label the album as mere orchestral pop; The Great Eastern sounds much more like a complete symphony in 10 movements. There are only subtle variations between the songs, but as you delve further into them, you realize that it's precisely this subtlety that gives the album its power.

The Delgados' best bet to follow up the success that last year's "Pull the Wires from the Wall" generated in England (with help from superfan John Peel) is the album's sixth (and longest) track, "No Danger." It's a gloriously uplifting song, whose swirling and shimmering chorus rises triumphantly out of a haunting melody played by a single piano and violin. The song works especially well when juxtaposed with the previous song, the brooding "Thirteen Gliding Principles," in which heavy tension builds slowly in the background as Emma Pollard and Alun Woodward trade vocals before the churning guitars burst through in a flurry of noise.

The final song, the sorrowful "Make Your Move," begins with Pollock's tender voice imploring us to "Finish what you've started here." And this is just what the Delgados have done. "The Great Eastern" is clearly the album that the band felt they had to make at this point in their career. And luckily we, the audience, get to reap the benefits of their ambition. (Chemikal Underground)

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