I was massively saddened to hear about the passing of Greg Gilbert of Delays yesterday.
A year or two ago, there was a thing going round on Facebook where people nominated each other to post their ten favourite albums.
I couldn’t narrow it down to ten so I broke the rules and posted 34. And one of them was Faded Seaside Glamour by Delays which, to be fair, would probably have made my top ten on any given day.
It’s an album of immense beauty. It sounds like a hazy, halcyon summer. The songs are incredible. Greg Gilbert’s ethereal falsetto is not of this Earth.
It’s an album that should have been absolutely huge but, for some weird reason, remains a kind of cult classic. A band that didn’t fit into any of the pigeon-holes of the mid-naughties, as there didn’t seem to be a category called Life-Affirming Transcendent Pop Beauty at the time.
I could go though all of its 12 tracks and say something wonderful about each one.
The graceful pop of their best known song Long Time Coming, the divine chorus to Nearer Than Heaven, the heart-breaking feel of Satellites Lost, sublime three-part vocals on the bridge of Stay Where You Are…
And finally, You Wear The Sun is in the running for my favourite song, EVER. Only 100,000 streams on Spotify and I swear half of those are from me.
Summer may be over, but blast this album out and it will feel like it’s still here.