By Jim Rowland
They only played their first gig in March 2021 and their debut album ‘Forever Giving Handshakes’ was a Top 10 Album for Rolling Stone Australia when it was released in their native Australia at the tail end of last year, plus Henry Rollins has played most of their catalogue on his KCRW show and is a huge fan. They are Melbourne’s Delivery, and ‘Forever Giving Handshakes’ now gets a ÜK release this month.
Australia does of course have a tradition of producing quality rock bands going all the way back to the ’60s, and recently the likes of Amyl & The Sniffers, Stiff Richards and Civic, amongst a fair few others, have carried that tradition on with some cracking punk rock. Delivery may not be as in-your-face punk rock as those bands, but their quirky garage rock and spiky post-punk has certainly caused a stir already, and it’s not hard to see why with absolute gems on this album like the ultra-catchy current single ‘Baader Meinhof’ and the psychedelia-tinged ‘Lifetimer’.
The likes of ‘Picture This’, ‘Office Party’ and ‘No Homes’ are quality quirky, angular slices of post-punk, ‘Wear It Well’ adds a twist of funk in a Gang Of Four kind of way, and the slower and slightly more poppy ‘Born Second’ has a hint of Blur to it. Elsewhere, ‘Good’ is a belting pop/punk tune the Buzzcocks would have been proud of and the heavier ‘Best Western’ hints at the direction of Pixies.
The dual male and female vocal approach works well, with some of the female vocals bound to draw comparisons with Amy Taylor in their..er, delivery, whilst the aforementioned ‘Lifetimer’, one of the highlights for me, has an almost Syd Barret quality in the vocal delivery.
There’s so many different influences washing through this album that it all adds up to something really rather fresh sounding. Considering the progress this band has made in a short space of time, there’s clearly a very bright future ahead for Delivery, and ‘Forever Giving Handshakes’ is quite exceptional for a debut album.
- ‘Forever Giving Handshakes’ is released tomorrow (Friday 19 May).
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