Delta Spirit preview

Delta Spirit
Schubas, Chicago
Sunday, August 31, 2008

By selecting the word “spirit” for their band name, San Diego’s Delta Spirit provide a too-easy-to-bypass avenue from which dissect their sound. Their debut, Ode To Sunshine (Rounder), has a helluva lot of familiar aurae around it.

When bands like Spoon and Arcade Fire began collecting commercial bounty alongside sycophantic critical praise, it happened despite their rougher edges. I’ll proffer a dubious argument (Death Cab For Cutie are, after all, watered-down Sunny Day Real Estate), but they were reversing a trend that normally finds bands sanding their corners to gain wider acceptance. Robbers On High Street popped up with a less-fussy Spoon sound, but couldn’t manuever their aerodynamic sheen past the real deal — modern rock fans weren’t having them.

Delta Spirit, without any blatant thieving, sound like they’re looking to pip either The Walkmen or Walkmen-precursor Jonathan Fire Eater. Finger Matt Vasquez’s wine-drunk, cat-in-heat serenade or Kelly Winrich’s music-box, spectral piano, but there’s something fishy elbowing in on an already-admitted debt to The Waterboys. What salvages Ode To Sunshine, however, is they’ve plucked the right parts — namely the, um, spirit. From tracks 2 through 11, the album percolates through brass, harmonica, those anecdotal keys, and an antsy kineticism. Vasquez is a perpetual joy, saying “fuck it” to vocal coaches everywhere while the band struggle to latch a chest springing with impudent toys.

It’s a blazing start, but one Delta Spirit would be wise not to repeat. Pray the Spirit moves.

Death Ships open.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to stream “Trashcan.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly