Our delay will come

Talk about a result. I’m interviewing my girlfriend’s favourite band on February 14th, and guess what their new single’s called? Yup, ‘Valentine’. A polite “Would you mind sticking your autograph on this?” later and that bouquet which was going to cost me 30 yo-yos has become surplus to requirements.

Delays singer and guitarist Greg Gilbert is somewhat less of a tightwad.
“I’ve arranged for a dozen roses to be sent to my girlfriend who works in The Observer,” he smiles beatifically.
‘Boyfriend of the Year’ candidate or not, the falsetto-voiced Englishman is crap at delivering albums on time. I’m referring to the fact that Delays – there is no “the” – told us their sophomore collection, You See Colours, was coming out in September ‘05 and then came up with a “The dog ate my CD”-style excuse for putting it back six months. What’s Mr. Loverman got to say about that, eh?
“The mutt in this case was my brother, Aaron, who lost a disc with over a hundred keyboard parts on it when we played the Southampton Guildhall.”
I trust he did what Noel Gallagher would do in the same situation, and gave his younger sibling a twatting.
“I was going to until I saw how distressed he was, and realised the beating he was giving himself was worse than anything I could administer. It’ll probably turn up in 23 years like Bono’s briefcase with the October lyrics in did.”
Surely there was a backup?
“He was really offended when I asked him that – ‘Yeah, of course, I’m not stupid’ – and then admitted he was stupid ‘cause it was in the same box as the master. What it did do was force us to write in a much more direct way, and not get all anal in the studio like we did with Faded Seaside Glamour.”
Delays diehards will recall young Aaron’s spectacularly gickered state in 2004 when the band played the Temple Bar Music Centre.
“I remember it being a great gig – like Oxegen was a few months before – but not whether he was off his tits or not,” says big bro. “It’s hard to tell ‘cause he’s genuinely always suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder. He had to move school when he was a kid and still can’t sit in the same chair for more than 30 seconds.”
Contrary to the evidence you’ve been hearing, Delays are not the Dysfunctional Band from Planet Hell, although they have met them.
“We’re on the same label as Babyshambles, so we’ve seen the soap opera,” chuckles bassist Colin Fox. “What attracted us to Rough Trade is Geoff Travis, its boss, being such a music fan. Like Elektra in the ‘70s, he signs artists he loves and then gives them two or three albums to develop a following, which is great for a band like us that doesn’t take heroin, shag supermodels or belong to any particular ‘scene’.”
While determined to plough their own furrow, there must be bands, past and/or present that Delays regard as kindred spirits.
“Our first meeting point,” Greg resumes, “was the Stone Roses. There was a real intellect and sensitivity behind their first record, which was kind of lost when they became – not through choice, I think – a ‘lads’ band. The same happened to another of our favourite groups, Manic Street Preachers. That ‘We just wanna get drunk’ line was supposed to be an indictment of drink culture, not what every pisshead sang at three o’clock in the morning leaving the nightclub. Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to stop your music being hijacked like that.”
Normally unless I was writing for Studio Widget Monthly I wouldn’t ask too much about the producer, but Colours was buffed to a fine sheen by the legendary Trevor Horn.
“He heard ‘Valentine’ in the Rough Trade offices when it was just a Giorgio Moroder-esque riff and said, ‘I wanna produce it’,” Gilbert concludes. “Trevor thought I was a male/female duo, which is the best compliment I’ve ever been paid! He’s so great at structuring songs that when he says you’ve nailed it, you’ve nailed it!”
A job well done then.
“This is going to make us sound like arrogant bastards but, yeah, it’s a fucking awesome record!”