Delta Spirit - History From Below

Delta Spirit’s debut, ‘Ode To Sunshine’, was a carefully-studied exercise in how to imitate your predecessors. Acting as sort of catch-all genre band, they rocketed from Cold War Kids’ piano-driven indie, past gospel and straight into campfire singalong in just eleven tracks. ‘History From Below’ sees a band matured by touring and critical success limiting their musical palette - and becoming far less exciting for it.

This second effort opts for a far stricter focus on genre, oscillating between traditional indie-rock and a country aesthetic, consequently never reaching the unpredictable heights of what came before. The opening salvo of ‘911’ and ‘Bushwick Blues’ more or less set the tone for the rest of the proceedings, the former a protest song straight from the Creedence Clearwater Revival line of country rock and the latter an anthemic indie-rock stomper reminiscent of The National on fast-forward. Unfortunately, in setting the tone with these songs, they expend the best of their energy - the heart and soul of the album lies in the opening two tracks, and it’s all downhill from there.

Each track beyond sounds like a variation on these two themes or somewhere in between, with the exception of ‘Vivian’, a soulful, impassioned number that unfortunately sounds like a carbon-copy of the superior ‘People Turn Around’ from the first album, and ‘Scarecrow’, a gentle acoustic ditty complete with outdoor diagetic noise that almost salvages some real interest. Despite all this, ‘History From Below’ is certainly not a bad album – on the contrary it’s similar in its sonic success to what the band have previously produced, but in losing a sense of scope, it sacrifices that feeling of surprise and wonder that characterised ‘Ode To Sunshine’. Which was always the point, really.