DELTA - The City's Bigger Than Both Of Us CD (Dell'Orso)

This didn't grab me at first but I persevered with it and I'm glad I did. The title track is written by Patrick and is very catchy; The World That You See is one of James' songs, one of those almost-depressing-but-in-a-good-way songs that James is good at writing. Shake It, an upbeat song which is the most rockish thing here (but not as rock as the early stuff) starts off promising, but then Patrick starts singing "He's a big gorilla, he's an imbecile-a ... Here comes dirty Trevor, cooking in a leather overcoat". Delta are not a comedy band and I'm sure they don't want to get a reputation as one, but they no doubt will if they carry on releasing songs with lyrics like this. Elephant Man, from the Slippin' Out album, made me cringe in two ways - on the surface it was just plain silly with its "She looks like the Elephant Man, she talks like the Elephant Man" (etc) lyrics, but when delving deeper into the song you find its pretty horrible bulimia-related subject matter. Many reviews of this I saw commented on how disturbing it was, and I'm inclined to agree. Shake It, however, has no 'heavy' subject matter lurking in it, just daft humour, and I'm not convinced that daft humour is what Delta are good at. This is, however, a good song if you ignore the lyrics.

Back to James for the last track, a solo home recording which sounds incredibly lo-fi after the three previous tracks which, like Slippin' Out, are produced by Lenny Franchi and Delta and sometimes include orchestral instruments (The World That You See has a flute and Shake It has a brass section). The lyrics were the only problem I had with some of the songs on Slippin' Out, and the same is true here with Shake It, but on the whole I can't fault this EP.

Also available on limited edition 10". Dell'Orso is a new label set up by Guy Sirman of Dishy Recordings - write to 74 Gibson Gardens, London N16 7HD.