Like most fans of THE DELAYS, I’ve been looking forward to the release of their second album “You See Colours”.
“Faded Seaside Glory” was always going to be a difficult one to top. It had bags of originality, sublime vocal arrangements, a nice mix of cheery pop, ethereal folky melodies, and forlorn love ballads. “Nearer Than Heaven” remains one of my all time favourite tunes, and is a brilliant example of the "perfect" pop song. Unfortunately, “You See Colours” [“I See Dead People”] falls short of the benchmark set by their first efforts by a long shot.
It seems that with rising success and access to larger producers [Trevor Horn], the atmosphere, depth, and genuine uplifting sentiments we got the first time round have been replaced with a slick, synthetic mush which steps away from their more innocent younger days.
This doesn’t take away from the fact that the songs are ok. It’s just that on their first album, the tracks played like a journey, the songs fitted seamlessly into each other, coaxing the mood from light to dark and back again. In contrast, "You See Colours" is a collection of uninspiring indie-disco tracks with the obligatory electro-pop squelches and heavy bass lines. i.e. it comes across as totally manufactured.
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There are redeeming features though, “This Town’s Religion” and “Waste of Space” stand out as songs you’d expect to hear from a band of such obvious talent. The latter has the searing Kate Bush-esque vocals we know and love, and has managed to tackle a full-on love song without once sounding cheesy – and again, we have the wonderful vocal arrangements, which are a hallmark of this band.
Unfortunately, a couple of songs out of 11 doesn’t cut the mustard, but then again they did have a humdinger of a first album to match up to, which was no small task indeed. And it's fitting that at least they'll always have their Faded Glory to fall back on.
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