Back to Bedroom

Music in Britain has returned to its roots in bedrooms and garages across the land, says lead singer of The Delays Greg Gilbert. He talks to Tony Clayton-Lea about the resurgence of old-fashioned rock values

IT'S NOT all about Arctic Monkeys, you know; there are more "hotly tipped" bands out there than you can count, more things that have to be done in order to achieve success than you can imagine, and more strategies to be put in place so that your favourite band has a chance of being around longer than a few months.

In a room in Dublin's Central Hotel, The Ticket asks questions about how to keep up with the posse and the pressure. The Delays' singer Greg Gilbert valiantly rises to the occasion, despite having flown in from his native Southampton in the wee dark hours of the morning and suffering from a sore throat. A trouper. From Southampton. Who'd have thought it?

Greg says he doesn't feel pressure to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of The Delays' new album, You See Colours. Self-respect, he imparts, is what it's all about. And taking risks. "We have to take a few risks, because we're not the kind of band that has a lot of hype around them. Everything that is happening for us is happening because we have the songs, which I guess is an old-school way of thinking - even though part of me resents saying that, because there is a magic element to what we do."

Magic is all well and good, but unless you're a wizard on the stock market it doesn't pay the bills. Greg is old enough (28, making him something of an older brother figure to many contemporaries) to have seen many acts come and go amid a blaze of publicity and lights: "Obviously, that's the downside of being attached to a scene, and we don't plan to go down that route."

Well, how can any band from the rock music hinterland of Southampton ever attach itself to a scene? It's a two-way thing, says Greg - if The Delays had come from the centres of UK rock music (Manchester, London, Liverpool), he reckons they would have been signed ages before they actually were.

"Southampton is a blank canvas, isn't it? You can define what you do very much in your own image. The only trouble is that if you come from a place where there is no musical heritage, then people might not take you seriously. That said, we only see and appreciate the positives."

For years , therefore, The Delays operated within something of a vacuum - they were close enough to London for the day trip, but come night time it was back in the garage or bedroom for music practice. The distance from the capital engendered a sense of self-belief; there was no carping, either, from scene or taste makers. Next big thing talk? Not for The Delays.

"I sympathise with bands that get that label stuck on them," comments Greg. "There are loads of good bands around, but I'm suspicious when so many bands start to sound like each other. What happened with us is that we were going quite a time before we had a record deal; we just hid ourselves away in Southampton, intent on operating quite autonomously. We weren't really influenced by Southampton bands, let alone bands on a national scale. Any qualities about our sound are there purely on a primal, organic level of four mates rehearsing in a garage. There has been no agenda sound-wise at all. If we were talking commercially, or even in terms of getting coverage, we wouldn't have chosen to sound the way we did. There are easier ways to get a bit of instant attention in the media - all that angular, jerky New Wave stuff. I'm an old romantic, you see."

Although not part of any scene we can conjure up, The Delays - whose musical swirls and melodic lines are quite the antithesis of angular and jerky - form part of the resurgence of quality Brit rock. "We're aware the scene is healthier than it's been for quite a long time, regardless of whether we sound similar or not. The main good thing about the past few years is that music has been returned to the bedrooms and the garages again for young people, and I think they're always the best places. Sometimes, the way you read about music in some magazines, it's more about the lifestyle than the music, and that's bad.

"There are people out there with similar tastes to myself, but when it comes to live music there are a lot of people who aren't being catered for - I hate using that phrase for obvious reasons, but I genuinely think we're one of the few bands around that can offer them something different. We can see that in the audience, which makes the live shows far more enjoyable than most."

Success, or some of it anyway, implies Greg, is dependent on personality - it is, he believes, the most valuable thing anyone has, because it's unique. And being musically and lyrically honest is the proverbial icing on the cake. "There is always interest and value in honesty. If The Delays sounded like Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys or The Killers, then you might say we'd be competing with them. But we don't sound like them at all, so I feel we're as much in competition with those bands - and others - as, say, opera singers."

Naiveté helps, apparently - especially when you're the kind of rock act that constantly has percentage figures thrown at them. To join a band and believe you're actually going to achieve something, that takes either courage or foolishness. "You end up quoting those percentage figures back at relatives," says Greg, "and they start telling you to get a proper job."

The week The Ticket spoke to Greg, The Delays visited several Irish venues; a small tour in a small country, where the financial returns weren't just small but negative. Everyone knows by now that most tours (even those by big name acts) lose money.

The positives include spreading the word about the band, playing live in front of enthusiastic fans, talking to interesting and attractive people of the opposite sex, and selling merchandise. And then it's back to the tour van for a profit margin meeting.

It's the same for every band of The Delays' stature, reckons Greg. "We've met all our contemporaries and they have the same story. It's in the record company's interests to get us out on the road for the fans to see us. The money side of things is a trauma for me and I try not to think about it too much. It's a bad idea to think in terms of career.

"Without even meaning to, I'm a real believer in self-fulfilling prophecy. Your attitude dictates where you go, and I'm mindful of thinking along those lines. I've got friends who used to be in bands, and the moment they signed to a record label they started talking about all the bad things that could happen to them, and how worried they were. And all those bad things happened."

If songwriting is magic, as Greg has claimed, then selling songs is . . . well, what exactly? "It isn't magic," states Greg. "It's science. And you create your own environment."

You See Colours is released through Rough Trade