Hooray for The Delays: Everything's The Rush

I've been a Delays fan since their debut album Faded Seaside Glamour. I still distinctly remember buying it from the fantastic A&B Sound when it was still in operation in downtown Winnipeg (it closed a couple of years back - it seems the closing of proper music stores is always inevitable), and listening to it before I went to my German language lab at university. Greg Gilbert's unique raspy falsetto caught my attention and their soaring, dreamy melodies transported me. I proceeded to listen to it over and over, loving tracks like Wanderlust, Long Time Coming, Stay Where You Are, You Wear the Sun, and Hey Girl (a song which bears a strong resemblance to The La's classic There She Goes). When I was in the UK in 2006, I made sure I bought their second album, You See Colours, which continued to impress me (Valentine is one of the most technicolour auditory experiences I've ever had, and You and Me is a beautiful pop symphony). I then eagerly waited as they released their Love Made Visible EP to hear what their next full album would be like, especially since they were dropped from Rough Trade and signed to Fiction Records. Officially released tomorrow in North America, Everything's the Rush is everything I would expect from the Southampton four-piece - ebullient, frothy loveliness. Some critics have called this album overstated, but I think the fact that The Delays reach for those extremes and blow them out only makes their work that much more euphoric. Romance - by which I mean the true sense of the word and not purely gooey expressions of love or a deplorable genre of novel - is always overstated, and The Delays definitely have a romantic sensibility.

While Everything's the Rush may not have that pumping electronic feel of songs off You See Colours, it does continue to prove their ability to craft incredible melodies with unabashed bombast. Lead-off single, Hooray, is joyful, jangly and jacked-up, and feels like an out-of-control kite whipping up into the stratosphere, but it only hints at the brilliance of the rest of the album. My favourite tracks on the album are Touch Down, which has interweaving lines of dancing melody, creating a vivid tapestry with syncopated drums; No Contest, which features a pulsing synth line that bubbles up like early Depeche Mode; and Friends Are False, which opens with harder guitars, leading into a darker song with a chorus that oscillates as Gilbert's voice clambers up and down scales - probably the most rock I've ever heard from The Delays. Love Made Visible opens to a rhythm that sounds like breathing, but then explodes into twee choruses celebrating an energetic love, and One More Lie In celebrates further romantic notions of youthful rebellion. To temper the energy of the rest of the album, songs like Pieces, Silence, and Jet Lag are slower with string sounds, dramatic sweeps of the orchestral, and melodic lines that skip along like children around a maypole. The bonus track The Earth Gave Me You is a pretty whirling dervish of a song with delicate keyboard lines paired with Gilbert's dreampop vocals, and it provides a perfect end for the album.

And so The Delays have delivered again. Leave your pretensions behind. Join the rush.

Hooray - The Delays

Touch Down - The Delays

Chest Out - The Delays (Hooray B-side)

I Blame Chaucer For Life-Sized Teddy Bears

I tend to forget Valentine's Day until I'm literally confronted with it when I enter a store. The eye-searing pinks and reds in combination with the monstrous stuffed toys that could potentially suffocate you in your sleep usually clue me in. Since I've never been in a relationship when Valentine's Day rolls around, I've remained indifferent to it in much the same way I dismiss St. Patrick's Day. If I'm going to celebrate some saint's day, I may as well celebrate St. David's Day for all that they mean to me. Not to mention the fact the original Valentine's Day honoured several martyrs by the name Valentine and didn't have anything to do with romantic love until Chaucer connected the two in Parlement of Foules. I think I used to rail against Valentine's Day when I was younger, protesting against the pointless commercialism of it, but now I'm just at the point where I ignore it as a necessary point on the retailer's calendar which doesn't concern me.

To be honest, I'm actually glad I haven't been in a relationship with anyone during Valentine's Day (when I was broken up with one week prior to Valentine's Day several years back, I was hugely relieved). I have a feeling that I'd feel really uncomfortable with it much in the same way "romantic" gestures generally make me uncomfortable. Perhaps romance shouldn't lead to mortification, but for me, that's how it is. Add that to the fact that I don't see the point of flowers and/or chocolate (the former just die in a few days and the latter has no happy effect for me at all), and Valentine's Day just becomes a pretty useless ritual.

I'm generally not much for love songs either, and when I do listen to any that may qualify, they tend to be ones about falling out of love, unrequited love, or the love for a friend. This all makes me sound quite miserable, but believe it or not, these songs make me happy. I'm a perverse flower-hating, unsentimental person who gets more endorphins from a Cocteau Twins song than chocolate and who bought a love spoon necklace for herself (I don't rate most jewellery very highly either unless it has a connection to somewhere I travelled to).

Though I've been pretty harsh in the past to those who actually like Valentine's Day, I am not going to rant about it anymore because I recognize that I'm abnormal, and I also recognize that I'm not an emo teenager. So, I've decided to be as impartial as possible in song selection and to be considerate of both views of Valentine's Day by including frothy, appropriately titled songs from The Delays and The Moths; conversely, I've included cynical, politically-motivated tracks from McCarthy and the Manics.

I may fall into the McCarthy and Manics camp on this one, but I won't condemn those who don't. And there very likely is a form of love out there that isn't sappy or uncomfortable...I just haven't ever experienced it.

Valentine - The Delays

Valentine - The Moths

Boy Meets Girl So What - McCarthy

Love's Sweet Exile - Manic Street Preachers