The Sunshine Delay: Keep It Together

[John (Biscuits and Gravy) Davy]

www.sunshinedelay.com

Back with their second album just seven years since their debut (swanning around the world on the proceeds, I expect), Edinburgh's Sunshine Delay sound just as fine as they did first time round. Playing country rock with a fair emphasis on the rock element, this is guitar-driven music with some urgency to it. The guitar belongs to Iain Barbour, Scotland's go-to man if you want a country guitarist; there are other bands he plays with/has played with, including the excellent Wynntown Marshalls, and he's also frequently called upon to play with visiting American artists, notably Jason Ringenberg. In the context of The Sunshine Delay, he really drives their music along; I don't know what the trick is, but it sounds to me like he plays a fraction ahead of the beat. Whatever it is, it's the guitar that makes for that urgency and that gives this band a distinctive sound.

                There's eleven new songs here, credited to the band as a whole, and if Iain Barbour's guitar catches one spotlight, then Paula McKee's singing is plenty strong and assured enough to hold the centre of attention. These are songs of life and love, written with a canny eye for what works in a live set - there's a nice balance between the uptempo foot-tappers and slower, more contemplative numbers where Paula's singing really comes to the fore. Though she takes most of the lead vocals, bassist David McKee also gets his share at the mic and he's got a really good voice for this genre, reminiscent of a whole host of American singers with that slightly plaintive tone. It's not too fanciful to say that on Roll Off The Treble you can hear something of Gram Parsons in his style.  Paula sings harmony on that number; mostly the roles are reversed but they sound really good together, their harmonies being perhaps the most recognisably "country" element to their music. Actually, I should mention Brendan O'Brien's drumming at this point; if I knew anything at all about drumming I'd be able to tell you why he sounds like an authentic Nashville sticks-man. As it is, I'll have to say that you'll recognise his style from any number of recent big country acts - Mary Chapin Carpenter springs to mind for me.

                  For recording purposes the four-piece band have been augmented by Ali Petrie on keyboards and George Stott on guitars and mandolin.  There's a video on the website of the core band performing which makes it clear that the extra help is just the icing on the cake, because they make a fine sound all by themselves. That video is of them performing Leaving Song which is the highlight of this album, the number where they really get the bit between their teeth as a band, and run with it. Iain Barbour gets license to cut loose in the middle section and it sounds great, really exuberant. Throughout this album I keep feeling there are sneaky references to other songs, little phrases here and there that ring a bell, and to hear their hardest-edged rocker, King Of The Small Town, open with a blatant reference to Smells Like Teen Spirit makes you feel that maybe they're having a bit of fun with in-jokes along the way. It's just one more thing that makes Keep It Together a really entertaining album, yet one more in a long line of  great Scottish country rock albums.

 

John Davy

 

 

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