The Delines - Mr Luck and Ms Doom - New Brown LP
Format New LP Label: DECOR Cat. No. DECOR70LP
Released: 14/02/2025
Barcode: 843563169667
The Delines fourth record, came from a night in Dublin, Ireland, when singer Amy Boone asked Willy Vlautin to write a romantic tune. It’s the story of two ragged misfits: a failed criminal and a depressive house cleaner who somehow hit the lottery in meeting each other. With that song the soul of the record was found: ragged couples on the run. Recording began at Bocce Studios with longtime collaborator John Morgan Askew. The record features Amy Boone’s lush, world worn voice, the cinematic production skills of Askew, and the horn and string arrangement of Delines keyboardist and trumpeter, Cory Gray. This is wide screen, CinemaScope, Delines at their best.
Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom is the Delines most realized and strongest album to date, a record of romantic misfits and grifters who live out of suitcases and cars, who can’t seem to settle down, who hope that in the next town or city will be the score that saves them. Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom features the stalwart Delines line up: Amy Boone on vocals, Cory Gray on horns and keyboards, Sean Oldham on drums, Freddy Trujillo on bass, and Willy Vlautin on guitar.
“A conversation between two artists,” is how Amelia Barratt, one of the artists involved, describes Loose Talk. “Something we’ve created together that neither could do on our own,” adds Bryans Ferry, her interlocutor in the creative exchange. “And, for me, it seems to have opened up a whole new chapter for my work.”
Hard Times Furious Dancing is an invitation to all those lost in the unrelenting noise of the present, to leave it all behind and come together in the forest. Driven by the primitive thrust of their single-oscillator ‘log’ synths, high and low culture collide in a surreal, free flowing narrative - but the rhythm is universal. This is easily the closest Snapped Ankles have come to capturing their rapturous live energy in the studio. It’s everything you’ve come to know and love from a Snapped Ankles album, amped all the way up until the ground begins to shake.
The sound of Hard Times Furious Dancing evolved at Snapped Ankles’ South London ‘Forest Rayve’ club nights in 2024 in response to that age-old primal urge to bring people together and make them move. It’s the first time the woodwose have road tested new material to this extent before committing it to tape since debut album Come Play the Trees, and in doing so have harnessed that feral energy once again. This surreal human/woodwose connection is the very best release from an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself. Dance it all loose.