Blonde Ambition

Delays mainman Greg Gilbert is relaxing poolside on his Cap Ferrat estate prior to the band heading out on a globe-straddling tour that’s set to replace The Police at the top of the box-office charts.
Most of the travelling will be done in his own Gulfstream G500, which can be spied behind the stables where his prize Arabian… sorry, I just slipped into a parallel universe there.
Gilbert is actually freezing his crown jewels off in that most un-Mediterranean of locales, Southampton. A tour does indeed await, but will be conducted by good old-fashioned bus and take in venues that are only marginally bigger than Sting’s dressing-room.
A shocking state of affairs given the perfect pop that Delays – we’ve told you before, there is no “the” – have been peddling for the last six years.
“We’re not a ‘haircut’ band who are in the NME every week, so we knew it was going to be a slow-build,” Greg says philosophically. “Our third album – Everything’s The Rush – is coming out in April, which is a big one for us ‘cause we’ve switched from Rough Trade to Snow Patrol and Kate Nash’s label, Fiction. Geoff Travis is a fantastic guy, but Rough Trade were too busy trying to keep Pete Doherty on the straight and narrow to pay us much attention.”
Gilbert might not live in a flash continental gaff, but he’s recorded in one.
“Yeah, we wanted this to be a sunny record so we went down to Youth’s châteaux in Grenada, which has the most amazing views of the Sierra Nevada mountains,” he beams.
Youth being a former member of the Most Out There Band In The History Of Rock ‘N’ Roll, a.k.a. Killing Joke.
“He’s still pretty cosmic. There was one day he went missing, and was eventually found lying outside on the path with stones on his chest and his head, realigning his chakras. We had so many discussions about philosophy, wicker, spirituality and ghosts, which is something I’m really interested in.”
So much so that a couple of years back Delays guested on an episode of Living TV’s Most Haunted.
“That’s all hammed up for the cameras, but I did have a genuine paranormal experience when me and (drummer) Roly were walking through a park in Southampton,” he recalls. “We heard a woman behind us whispering a lullaby, turned round and there was nobody there. I didn’t know at the time, but we were standing on the site of an old World War II bomb shelter, which got hit with loads of kids in it.”
Chakras balanced, how did they get on with Youth?
“Brilliantly,” Greg enthuses. “He’s worked in the past with Paul McCartney, and wanted to do the old Beatles thing of a track a day – scary stuff for someone like me who normally has the spectrogram out analysing soundwaves! All we had going into the studio was the basic structures of the songs, which meant having to come up with the hooks, lead breaks, overdubs and all the other stuff on the spot. It was definitely the most creative environment we’ve been in.”
I’m inviting chronic indigestion here, but if there’s a better anthemic pop album this year than Everything’s The Rush I’ll eat my Everton bobble-hat.
“It’s taking that melancholic, epic quality and sending it skywards,” he reflects. “We’re not a kitchen-sink band. We’re not singing observational songs about contemporary life. It’s escapism.”
Which is the most pertinent 25-word review you’ll read this fortnight in Hot Press. Replacing Sting & Co. at the top of the global box-office chart may be wishful thinking, but Delays aren’t without their overseas conquests.
“We didn’t even know our records were available in Mexico until we got a call saying, ‘Would you like to come over and headline this 6,000-capacity bullfighting arena?’” Greg smiles. “It was surreal driving in and seeing the streets lined with bootleggers who’d made their own Delays t-shirts. Then when we got to play the place went fucking nuts. You could really get used to it!”
Something tells me he's going to have to.