REVIEW: The Delgados, Peloton (Chemikal Underground/Beggars Banquet)
- Niles Baranowski
"Like Belle and Sebastian with distortion pedals," is how my horribly simplistic friend described this second album by Scotland's pop royalty The Delgados, whose Chemikal Underground label is the net that has caught all the fattest fish in Scotland's popscene. From Mogwai to Bis to Magoo, all these and more have a home on Glasgow's master label.
And my friend is right about Peloton. "The Actress" and "Russian Orthodox" are kick-started by massive washes of guitar, igniting the pastoral melodies and vocal harmonies of vocalist Emma Peel (who also does work for David Gedge's Cinerama project) into a slightly bloodstained valentine. It's tuneful and menacing at the same time; a skeleton nicely adorned with jagged edges.
But, my friend is wrong, too. Peloton is much more than just a grunge answer to Orange Juice. The album also uses strange guitar tunings and slow, eccentric melodies to achieve a hummability that is neither too easy, nor lazy and atonal like Arab Strap. The glorious single, "Everything Goes Around the Water," has a bridge in call-and-response form (when was the last time you heard that in a pop song?) and a chorus that circles hypnotically. "Pull the Wires from the Wall" is melancholic and timid, with an off-kilter lyrical sensibility (you've got to love a chorus that starts with the phrase "For instance, I...").
However, Peloton is not an achievement to equal those of their Chemikal underlings. Peloton is too inconsistent, and it seems to fall apart at the very end. The band attributes this to their lives falling apart, but its far easier to see a hodgepodge of junk, like "Blackpool," as pure laziness. And no matter how bad I feel for what they went through, I won't be listening to "The Weaker Argument Defeats the Stronger" a second time. Still, in this age of increasing specialization, it's nice to know a group of people can do more than one thing reasonably well, and Peloton is almost worth it for the four or five marvelous tunes present here. Consider your purchase a donation to the Scottish Pop Defense Fund, if that helps. A donation with some dividends.
