Interview // The Delays

The Delays have taken a long time to find themselves, even though they’ve stood side by side for over six years as a band. We’ve enjoyed the products of the journey along the way, but with the latest album due for release this month, you truly feel that this time, us and them will all enjoy this one together. We caught up with Aaron from the band for a refreshingly grounded and funny chat…

Hey, is that Aaron?

Erm, I think it is… yes. My head was just up my arse for a second, but it’s definitely me now.

I’ve been in an underground dungeon sort of thing, it’s weird.

What, literally or metaphorically?

It’s where we rehearse; it’s sort of undergroud, so that’s where I just was. But now I’ve come out to the light.

Where is this underground dungeon?

It’s on like an industrial estate in Southampton. It’s quite seedy actually; I can imagine – well I know – that lots of stuff goes on here at night. It’s in an area called Millbrook. It’s an interesting place.

It sounds like it’s immersing you in its own surroundings as well…

Yeah, it is. It’s very oppressive.

I’ve just been reading your Camden Crawl review this morning – how good is that?!

Yeah, I just saw that this morning. That was ridiculous, well, that was just like an accolade and it was like, ‘Wow!’, y’know. You know sometimes when a gig is going to be different while you’re doing it, and that one was like that. I think we were all just chomping at the bit to play, and it just sort of went off, for want of a Shakespearian phrase, haha.

The review said that Greg was almost visibly nervous at playing – was it the same for you Aaron?

Greg’s always nervous. I always feel strangely numb before gig day. Unless we’re in the middle of a tour, if it’s an individual gig day, then I sort of wander round in a daze until we go on. It’s strange; it’s kinda like a numbness – I guess it’s fight or flight kicking in when I’m nervous, but it’s not horrible, I love it. I enjoy every moment when I’m on stage, which is rare, then afterwards I can’t wait to go and do it all again. I wish I could do that always.

Yeah, wouldn’t It be awesome if you could channel that feeling and use it as emotional recall and pretend that every moment was as exciting as being on stage…

Yeah, that’d be amazing, ‘cause I think if you’re having a good time, as soon as you’re aware of it, it’s gone, y’know… we should bottle that.

And start selling it at the gigs. I think us mere mortals never experience the feeling of it going off in front of our faces.

Go off!

Yeah, that’s what you could call it!

Gone off! Wow, that could make tens of pounds!

Haha, it really could. I’m starting to think complete megalomania.

I’m excited by this.

The Camden Crawl review said that you sang ‘Brilliant Sunshine’, but you’ve been doing a bit more singing on the tracks recently, haven’t you?

Yeah, I think it’s me just trying to shoehorn my way in! The thing is, me and Greg write the songs at the moment, and when I’ve written a song – and I don’t always write lyrics to songs – I kinda want to sing them, because they’ve got more meaning to me. Yeah, I did a couple on the last album and the response has been great, so I’m flattered, it’s really nice.

I read an interview with Greg actually that said your songs just don’t fit his diction because you write in the way you talk.

My poor diction, haha.

Is that what he was intimating?

I think it was you know, but I’ll kick his head in, in a minute. No I won’t… I think I sing in a different key to him. I like to think that I’m more manly, haha. No, I don’t mean that.

Well you don’t have the trademark falsetto vocals, but I guess it’s nice for him to give them a rest sometimes…

Yeah, we never actually thought about that, but I guess it is, you know, during the gig he enjoys that break. I’ve noticed actually that the songs that I sing are often back to back, so he must give his voice a rest and completely forget about everything else apart from losing himself in guitars.

What a nice thing for you to do Aaron…

I know, how nice am I?!

I think it was your birthday last week Aaron, but this year there was no mention on your blog. Last year the band posted up some beautiful pictures as a gift to you: something representing the weather as that’s something you’re obsessed with apparently…

Yeah, I know it’s a really British thing, but I’ve gone one further and actually got a weather radar thing on the back of my house, so I can see what we’ve got coming in, what the jet stream’s gonna throw at us. Do you know what, I just like extreme anything, but if I hear the words “sit”, “batten”, “down” and “hatches” in the same sentence of a weather report, I’m excited like a five year old child.

Have you experienced much tumultuous weather while you’ve been travelling with the band?

Yeah, loads. We were actually in New Orleans just before Katrina and we had to leave the city; everyone had to leave the city and we were there for that, it was great! But yeah, you know we had a lot of snow this year and I ended up just staying up and watching it and making footprints in it and getting into snowball fights with the students, which was great. I finally had some friends to do it with, haha! I’m giving you some inside information now though, and we’re actually going to have 14 weeks of summer.

Cor, we need that in Norwich…

We were actually in Norwich on the day the team bus was celebrating its promotion a few years back. Me and Rowly found ourselves topless, painted yellow and green and wandering round the city with everyone else!

Your music has quite an affiliation with football hasn’t it? It’s been featured on various football incarnations like Match of the Day and video games…

Yeah, they’ve sort of gravitated towards us, I mean, me and Greg used to play for Portsmouth when we were younger, which was a bit weird seeing as we were from Southampton, but I don’t know, it’s just sort of come about that they like to use us for all the sporting wonderments! But you know, everything looks good in slow motion, hehe!

Well your music in the past has been filled with a kind of elation – it’s very positive music.

Erm, it is yeah, but the things we write about are often not such wonderful subjects of elation, but we’ve always written in a way that shows that we suffer with our heads just like everybody else, but the way we deal with it is to write about it. We have done a lot of melancholic things, but we kind of put it to music that sounds quite positive, so it’s a bit of a juxtaposition, ha!

I’ve found that juxtaposition a lot on the new album, ‘Star Tiger, Star Ariel’ – it’s a little darker than your previous efforts, isn’t it?

Well you know it’s the fourth album now, so we were able to just indulge ourselves completely in this one, because we didn’t have any arseholes from London coming down to give us their opinion, which was nice to be able to do that. It was a difficult process writing with Greg this time though, because we didn’t get on too well. It actually just got to a point where I thought ‘hang on a sec, should we actually be doing this, because it’s destroying our relationship?’. But you know, we did it and the recording process was brilliant; it’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed doing it because of the frought tension of sitting in a room and hammering the songs out. It was really cathartic. It’s the only album I’ve done where I’ve actually listened to it after we’ve recorded it.

I really liked ‘Lost Tunes’, your EP of ‘lost tracks’ and covers, as I like the acoustic side of the stuff you do, but I think you’ve managed to capture the essence of that with the new album.

We’ve always talked about doing a whole album like that, which I’m sure we probably will at some point, but we’ve got so much new material that I think this one’s just ready to go!

There was quite a gap between you writing the material and then when you thought it’d come out, to when it’s actually coming out now. I read you thought it was coming out last September – was it down to the arseholes in London that it didn’t come out then?

Yeah, it was partly down to that, but we also had a lot of personal things going on with one and another, which kinda stretched things out a little more, but there was never a doubt about it coming out. We weren’t gonna rush it just to stick to a deadline this time – we didn’t have to. But where are we now? June – cor, it’s quite a long time between then and now, but we’re still here!

So what’s been happening personally then? Anyone gone off to get married?

No, no, this was darker than that.

Darker than marriage?!

Haha, darker than marriage, yeah, yeah! No, this is because Greg suffers from OCD quite badly, so we had to get him in a place where he was OK to record, and go away and things like that. Plus we fell out for like a month, we didn’t speak, so there’s a month gone.

I think that’s your prerogative as brothers actually, to fall out.

Yeah, but it’s a cliché as well though isn’t it, for us to fall out. I mean c’mon, we can do better than that. Let’s actually kill each other if we’re going to fall out, y’know, go one better.

You’re coming to Norwich for one of the later dates in the tour, so are you preparing heavily now?

Yeah, we are; we’re rehearsing today and obviously we had our Camden gig and I’ve just finished a couple of remixes that I had to do for us, so yeah, we’re back in the studio again for the first time today, just playing the new songs, because obviously we haven’t had a lot of opportunity to play them in.

How do you plan to recapture the magic of playing them for the first time? How do you make sure you don’t become bored with them by the end of the tour?

Well I think to be able to get up on stage and have people – and we’re lucky – have people sing our songs back to us and things like that, how could you ever get bored of that? I think if you do, you’ve lost your soul. I get goosebumps every single night we play – that doesn’t get boring.

I speak to a lot of musicians who often start to view what they do as purely a job.

Then why the… why are they even doing it? Music’s a form of expression and being creative and if they don’t have that, then why the fuck are they doing it? ‘Scuse my language, but that annoys the hell outta me.

Now Aaron, talk to me about Southampton. In 2007, Southampton was named one of the top ten best places to live by people aged 18-30! Why is that…?

Was it really? Well it’s absolute carnage if you go down there of a weekend!

Is it? Is that what they meant, that it’s just messy?!

Yeah, I think so to be honest. There are some great places to go out, there really is, and there are some awful places to go out! If you’re 18-30 though, you’re gonna have a great time in any city, it just depends on who you’re with. I didn’t know it’d been voted that though…!

Yeah, it was actually voted 2^nd best by women.

Hmmm, corrrr. The ladies feel secure. There’s a lot of gents in Southampton! A lot of gents.

Or maybe they feel insecure and that’s what they like a little bit?

Yeah, the ladies just love that impending sense of doom in their stomachs! “What’s gonna happen next?” – that’s why they come, haha. I’m interested to know where it is now though –

- Yeah, and how they judge it, because you’re in that age group and you weren’t asked to vote, otherwise I’m sure you would have put it first.

Yeah, haha. I was away that particular time, obviously!

Is it a good place to come home to, Southampton? Will you always remain there?

Yeah, definitely; we’ve been asked to move to London on countless occasions and we’ve lived there for like a few months here and there when we’ve been recording and doing promo stuff and I still love going to London, but it’s always nice to get out and leave and just come back here and get called a twat, you know.

That’s quite perverse that that’s something you enjoy…!

When you get surrounded by people by people who say exactly what you want to hear all the time, it can get quite unnerving and it’s fake.

Somewhere that you’ve always had a great reaction though has been America, hasn’t it? Have you found anywhere else that you’d consider to be a fan home?

The biggest for us is Mexico and South America – it’s crazy. The first time we went down there, there were like 50 people waiting for us at the airport. You know, like fans with banners. That was strange, but wonderful. We’d just come off this long haul flight and we looked like shit and felt like it as well, but that certainly picked us up. Then we went to play in this bull fighting arena and that was one of my favourite gigs ever.

Was that an ice cream van I just heard in the background, Aaron?

Yeah, it was. Where were they in the winter eh? Not too keen to come out then, are they? I could have killed for an ice cream when I had a bad throat.

I’m disappointed it’s not outside my window. Will you be chasing after it down the street?

I might do actually. I’ll email you one – it’s 2010, you can do anything.

Finally Aaron, you have a great memory of Norwich from last time you came, getting caught up in the football parade, but do you have any other memories of our city?

I really do like Norwich actually, and that day was the most I’d ever immersed myself in your city and its people! I had a big ‘N’ painted on me, which was lovely… by myself. But hey, you’ve got a good city there. The first time I ever went to Nando’s was in Norwich! For breakfast.

Wow, that is decadent.

Yeah, I wore my paisley slippers and smoking jacket -

- Because that’s how you roll.

That IS how I roll.

Emma Roberts

The Delays will be coming to Norwich Arts Centre on June 7^th.