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

Interview with Red Eskimo

See below for interview with local band Red Eskimo from last week's paper. Very impressed with the gig (and the album, review here) in Dolan's Warehouse last Friday night. The trio played the album right through from start to finish, something I don't think I've seen before and wouldn't have recommended, but it worked really well in this case. Anyway, read the interview and look out for these guys playing soon.
See this weekend's paper for an interview with Delorentos about their recent issues.

FOR MANY bands, going the DIY-route is a matter of necessity, the cost of recording in a studio too prohibitive. For others, eschewing the mainstream, studio-process is a matter of pride - a philosophical approach that determines the style of the material produced.

Red Eskimo are such a band. A softly-spoken triumvirate of local musicians - brothers Neil and Peter Delaney and Robert Carey - they are set to release their much-anticipated debut album this Friday night, the fruits of much labour on their part.

The ‘Grey Death Billow’ is a lovingly crafted album of nine ambient, understated electro-acoustic offerings - drawing from a wide range of influences and bursting with soundscapes and texture. Think elements of Midlake and The Shins with a smattering of Sigur Ros and Dublin band Halfset and you’re not far off the mark.

One of the key aspects of the album is the noticeable and, as it turns out, deliberate feeling of restraint, a band clearly not afraid to craft some delightful music that doesn’t mean to force itself to be heard above a crowd. Tellingly, the well-known local band don’t tend to use a live drummer when they play, preferring the pre-programmed beats recorded for them by sometime-member Dave Carroll.

“We like using that sound as opposed to an acoustic kit - drums can tend to take over and when we play live, we don't necessarily tend to play loud,” smiles singer Neil Delaney. “Over time we have realised playing a little lower than usual is better and suits us. When everything is turned up to ten, it just doesn't work.”

Red Eskimo emerged from the ashes of local outfit New Land Jester, Neil’s brother Peter joining in time to feature on the band’s debut recording.

“We started out as New Land Jester but that was a long time ago at this stage,” explains Neil, as Rob notes that it will be ten years ago next January that they released the album. “You can hear it too on that album, it sounds ten years old,” laughs Neil. Peter, the quietest of the trio, nods to himself.

It was literally back to basics after the dissolution of this group, the trio simply using a “really naff four-four beat” from Rob’s bass pedal when they played live.

“We thought there was something good naff about it,” laughs Neil. “Someone tagged us as lo-fi and we liked that, making simple music, but it developed on top of that. That was the basic groundwork.” Rob adds: “It has been a collaboration going on over the last couple of years, getting a set together and working out what songs to keep. We are doing things ourselves and trying to find the best way to do that - without going into a studio. This was a project we really wanted to take onto ourselves and have full control over and not be tied down to set deadlines.”

Recording was completed in a Kilmallock location, before being scrapped and started again. They talk about the three of them, huddled over a computer, working out the songs, adding to them, buying better software and adding again.

“The cost of going into a studio is obviously a factor and when you are in there you are under pressure cause you know you only have so much to spend,” explains Neil. “You start skipping things and don't give it the attention it needs. When you start doing the DIY thing - which we are into - basically you can take as much time as you like to record, until we were absolutely happy with it.”

That care is apparent on the album, there is no sense of the process being anything but slow-paced and careful. They have taken this DIY-ethos beyond the recording, uninterested in record companies and keen to handle themselves.

“In theory there is no real reason why you would spend all your time going out to woo record companies, or management and these types of people - there is nothing that says you need to do that,” says Neil. “The thing is there is total freedom for us - we put down these songs that we are playing at this moment in time, but the next recording we do, there is no-one to say what we have to do, we don't have to duplicate it.”

He adds, drawing laughter from all three band members: “If we want to become a dance band tomorrow, we can do that”. You get the sense that these guys could do exactly that. In the meantime go and see them perform these songs live. You won’t be disappointed.

Delorentos no more?

This just in off the wire (frankly a bit bizarre if you ask me - but obviously a knock-on effect of the band's record company folding before Christmas. A shame, especially after the buzz created by In Love With Detail - superb Irish album - and various tours, nationally and abroad)

Delorentos released the following statement today:

We've got some sad news.

It's with a very heavy heart that we have to let you know that Ronan has decided to leave the band. He feels it’s best for him to move on and do other things.

The three of us will still be making music and will let you know what happens next.

As our songs always came from the four of us playing together we've also decided that it wouldn't feel right to continue "delorentos" without him.

We're all very proud of the songs we've written over the last year, we feel they're some of the best we've ever done, and as a result we're determined not to discard them or let them go.

Next month, the four of us are going to record this album together and plan on making it something we'll all be proud of.

It'll be our last collection of songs as delorentos, and we hope you'll like them.We want to thank everyone that's supported us since we started, we'd never have gotten this far without you.

We hope to play a gig or two to say goodbye.

We'll be in touch soon with more details. Ross, Níal and Kieran and Ro