Delorentos - You Can Make Sound album review

Delorentos
‘You Can Make Sound’
(Delorecords)
RATING 4/5

AGAINST all the odds, Delorentos have produced a follow-up to 2007’s excellent debut, In Love With Detail. Following a ‘will-they, won’t-they’ shaky period in the life of the Dublin band, the quartet are set to release You Can Make Sound this Friday, amidst a quiet sigh of relief in several quarters.
The news that the band were to split at the beginning of the year was greeted with universal shock in Irish music circles, the Malahide band seen as one of the stronger outfits on the go.
The band, who were feted here and particularly abroad as the leading light among modern Irish rock bands, all jangly guitar hooks and killer choruses - declared that lead singer Ronan Yourell was to leave the band.
This followed a period where the band suffered record company setbacks and were, by their own admission, “burnt out”. However, before Yourell left, there was the matter of recording another album and playing some farewell gigs, and, as that progressed, he decided the output was too strong to walk away from.
It seems Irish super-producer Gareth Mannix was the glue that kept this band together, guiding them through a “cathartic process” and allowing them to re-discover their love for recording and playing music, and You Can Make Sound is the result.
Bassist Níal Conlan told this reporter that the album would contain more depth, reflect broader influences and concentrate more on structure as a result.
Although they have moved slightly from the more generic, 4X4 stadium rock that impressed on their debut, Delorentos have not gone and reinvented the wheel on this album, mining influences as broad as early Bloc Party, Editors and particularly, The Bravery.
Several songs on this album sound uncannily like that New York band, notably the opener Sanctuary, Hallucinations and Leave Me Alone.
The catchy riffs on Secret, the first single released from the album, make it more of a Delorentos song, and you will be doing well not to be humming the chorus for days after hearing it.
There is a nice change of pace on You Say You’ll Never Love Her and Leave Me Alone, delicate, emotional songs both - the latter on which Yourell sings “it’s a little too late for us to change”.
We don’t agree, as these songs demonstrate, Delorentos can take the tempo down, a fear that presented itself after their first album, which was mostly pepped up on youthful exuberance. The engaging Editorial and Body Cold are somewhat let down by Let The Light Go Out and the ill-advised Soulmate, but the album finishes on a high with the piano-driven, harmony filled I Remember.
However, it is the penultimate track, which the album is named after, that impresses the most, the distinctive rhythm and effortless cool of You Can Make Sound reinforcing the notion that this is one of the best Irish bands around. Let’s hope they can stay together for album number three. www.myspace.com/delorentos
Download: Sanctuary, You Can Make Sound