The Delgados - The Great Eastern The Delgados

When The Great Eastern surfaced it blew the group’s sound up to panoramic proportions. Like Mogwai at the time they drafted crack producer David Fridmann for mixing and production duties and the result is a unstoppably beautiful, grand vision borne of the studio, the group’s boundless imagination and a sense of wonder at the possibility of structure and sound. It’s predecessor Peloton showed the lightyears-ahead songwriting prowess of dual songwriters Emma Pollock and Alun Woodward but The Great Eastern was loaded with a seeming orchestra of sound: woodwind, strings, brass, synths, those big drum sounds that Fridmann specialises in. The band work wonders with it, managing to sound both massive, full and yet pared to the essential parts.

The Delgados always sounded exactly themselves, a sound that still feels incomparable. Sure sometimes in Woodward’s delivery there’s a restrained world-weariness that yanks at the heart – made more effective when it explodes into full stereo sound as on American Trilogy – that reminds us a little of Norman Blake’s vocal delivery. Accused Of Stealing has that lurching Velvets rhythm supporting Pollock’s snake-like melody. These are all glancing comparisons however; who else could marry an utterly disarming duet between the two singers that gets swallowed by star-lit codas and what sounds like a scratched Bond-theme string sections dredged up from a shark-infested pool.

Really, the vision on The Great Eastern is pretty breathtaking. It’s so cinematic in scope and the production tricks are a real joy to listen back to. If, like us, you’re familiar with the record, it’s spine-chilling listening back to those little Delgados moments that you’ve maybe not listened back to in a while. If Mogwai, for example, made ample use of volume with their quiet / loud dynamic, The Delgados do it with volume, emotional resonance. On Aye Today, the cans or speakers or hell, these days, your laptop speakers erupt with pure, golden stereo syrup. Even when the bass kicks in in certain parts it triggers that unique feeling music can do, specially if you’re familiar. FUCK yes that bass part! It can feel like it fills in a part of you that’s been missing, that’s what sound and its evocation of memory can do.

If you’re listening for the first time, this is what you can do with a song, with sound, with a heft dose of Central Scotland dreichery and a massive valley-full of imagination and chutzpah.