And the prize for the best soundtrack is……….. Or will be, when it’s made. The Delines do The Set Up.

ON A ROLL

The Delines are on a roll at the moment, issuing album after album of their rich Southern country soul fusion, getting ever more classic in their recreation of a distinctive retro sound, smacking of midnight trains to Georgia and the time it takes to get to Phoenix. This is part down to the consummate vocal glow of Amy Boone, and part to the precision of the play, all organ glosses and clipped percussion, with flickers of guitar and brass, held together by an always swaying majestic bass line. But, add to that the songwriting of that master of urban noir, Willy Vlautin, and it is hard to see anyone their equal at this sort of exquisite mood music.

RUDDERLESS ROMANCE Vs. FICKLE HOPLESSNESS

Barely a year since Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom, Vlautin and his crew realised that there was a whole lot more inspiration to be found, within those gritty vignettes of fraught underbelly existence, at the fringes of middle America. Vlautin describes how, as they were putting that album to bed, he brought in a further track. Then another and then another, unable to stop the flow, continuing to write what he saw as sister songs, as they were simultaneously touring that release. But these similar stories were holding a different candle to the lost souls who inhabit his songs, less the rudderless romance of those lives on the edge, more the fickle hopelessness of it all. Anyone familiar with the horrors of the Rust belt opioid epidemic, from so many boxset oxycontin dramadocs, will recognise the territory, witnessed first hand, as the band toured their home country.

EAR-CHARMING CLARITY

Grim? You’d think so, but actually not at all, courtesy the lush production of regular sidekick, John Morgan Askew, who ensures that every detail is picked out in an ear-charming clarity. The album starts with a flourish of brass that washes out effortlessly from the speakers, a lone organ chording in the background, whilst the slow tap of percussion limbers up.

This is the first of three related songs, all in the smoky spoken word of Boone, and each called The Set Up. As in Parts 1 to 3. Scene-setters, in any other band’s hands, they’d be filler, but, here, presented as they are, they are as integral as the actual songs and the instrumentals that link them all together. Vlautin is also a celebrated writer of crime fiction, and knows well how to put together a plot. Part 1 is the “lure“, he says.

That seed sown, Can You Get Me Out Of Phoenix is as gorgeous a construction as the band have yet managed, a plea to that intent, with hypnotic organ and electric piano swaying in a slow spar, as a twangy guitar billows deeply. The drums of Sean Oldham are monumentally minimal, the spaces as important as the strikes, a masterclass in economy. Boone oozes world weary femme fatale, as she sets out her stall, and the reasons she needs to be out of town. As this drifts gorgeously to conclusion, some lonesome trumpet, from keyboard man, Cory Gray, sparks up Jumping Off In Madras, a slow burning brief instrumental. This has you able to picture the scene perfectly and wordlessly. That’s Madras, in Oregon, lest you wonder.

BRUTALLY & BEAUTIFULLY SUCCINCT

Dilaudid Diane sounds a companion character to Holly The Hustle, from 2019’s ‘The Imperial’, and likely is; you can sense a continuum that stretches further back than just the album immediately behind it. With the title acting as a chorus, the songs starts off with it being chanted in repetition: “Dilaudid Diane, Dilaudid Diane, She’s had a rough one….” A cautionary tale, the vocals offer their dispassionate commentary over the fateful piano and organ: “She’s got a maxed out credit card, and 63 bucks“. Little more than a tone poem, it is brutally and beautifully succinct.

JUST DON’T…

Keep The Shades Down offers a little more hope, as in, if you don’t open the curtains and don’t look out the window, everything’ll be fine. Another 3D technicolour soundscape, all those rich tones, inspired by Muscle Shoals, polish the grime to a shine. Like Oldham, Trujillo, on bass, picks out as many spaces he can find, from his slow lower register of notes. Gray is quite the octopus for this one, adding trumpet, sax and keys, proving his sax is as rich his trumpet.

Without begging the question as to which ward or why, Getting Out The Ward is a further instrumental interlude, stark piano and singing horns, with striking sideswipes of strings forcing intermittent entry. If challenged, at this stage, as to whether I prefer the songs to the tunes, it would be difficult, such is the superior soundtrack quality of these connecting strands. The Set Up, part 2 follows, and is the “catch” to the earlier “lure“. $120 grands worth, and the style is appropriately a little more funky and upbeat.

The Reckless Life then fills in some of the intervening spaces, possibly adding more, horns again resplendent, chops of wah-wah breaking out in Vlautin’s guitar. “Some come back, some don’t” is both the gist and the chorus, it ending as happily you might anticipate. Life’s a bitch, right? The longest track here, it has a tremendous extended coda, as the horns build and repeat, build and repeat.

CONVINCING CONTRAST

Walking with His Sleeves Down is a bit different in the Delines canon, being little other than Boone and some gauntly plangent piano. Boone croons never more languidly, and Diane (of the dilaudid) gets another reference, as do Judas Priest, or at least their songs, that being all the referenced basement band play. It stands and sticks out by virtue the convincing contrast, and could well be the go to track of the whole set. Less satisfactory, at least to my ear, is the choppy The Meter Keeps Ticking, with a feel midway between Bossanova and Benny’s Jets. But it is good that these different textures get to get an air.

Should there be any surprise how part 3 of The Set Up ends? Well, I’m not going to over tell, but let’s just say Vlautin, in his notes, suggests this is the “grift” part of the presumptive sting. With that followed by an instrumental endpiece, The Last Time I Saw Her, one might surmise that the story is actually far from over. And, seeing as a few of his books have transferred to celluloid in one form or another, is this time for an enterprising film maker to make a definitive screenplay from this and the earlier albums? We’d watch it, wouldn’t we? Hell, we have most the soundtrack right here! This band, frankly, just get better and better.

The Delines: Website

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