The Delines’ world is a sprawling, blue collar soap opera. Flawed characters, aimless drifters, chancers and grifters, barroom fights, beat-up cars, parking lots, convenience store robberies, messed up relationships and broken dreams. It’s so romantic, it is magnificent.
One of the secrets of longevity I’ve discovered in this podcast is for artists to ‘create a world’ - not just working within a genre but inventing a whole world for listeners/fans to dive deep into. I can’t think of an artist or band who does this more effectively than The Delines.
The Delines’ world is a sprawling, blue collar soap opera. Flawed characters, aimless drifters, chancers and grifters, barroom fights, beat-up cars, parking lots, convenience store robberies, messed up relationships and broken dreams…the characters are never far off disaster - indeed they are predestined. It’s so romantic, it is magnificent.
As a recording band, The Delines are meticulous in rendering that world so perfectly. Their three full-length studio albums are full of the stories that make up this wider soap opera, and with 2022’s The Sea Drift, there is the added context of these stories based in the state of Texas and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. As a concept album you’ll be hard pushed to find anything as immersive. The Coral’s 2021 Coral Island springs to mind. The same values are here - novelistic lyrics (Willy Vlautin has written six novels), music economically played purely as a vessel for the songs, each musician plays with an exquisite restraint. Leading all this is Amy Boone’s voice, so occupying its subjects as to put you the listener into each and every tragic scene.
Remarkably though, The Delines can do all this and more as a live band, playing so true to their recordings that no amount of props are needed to convey the atmosphere - just as well since The Delines could hardly afford the luxury of big screens with bespoke backdrops. As Amy says:
“Nobody is grandstanding in this band, we're all just friends and musicians. The songs have so much atmosphere going on it’s just nice to absorb that”.
Willy adds:
“It’s a slow build, a subtle band we bring our audiences in with a whole mood which will get to them after a while. We live & die by restraint. We’re not a rock band, so we can’t rely on ‘big songs’ to get us through a gig or get us out of a jam”.
As Vlautin admits The Delines are “a small time band”, just like a music industry equivalent of the small time characters they write, sing and play about. Yet, as we discuss on the Art of Longevity - they are really occupying the same space, metaphorically and musically speaking - as Springsteen or Lana Del Rey. But The Delines don’t have major label backing, the marketing savvy or the desire for fame that those artists have.
I wouldn’t say either of those artists aren’t the real deal, everyone knows they are. Yet if it’s real music you want, then may we humbly introduce you to what might become your favourite new band. The Delines really are as real as the characters they sing about.