Album Review: Delta Rae – After It All
2 min read
American six-piece Delta Rae is a hard working band trying to make it in a big bad world. This is the sort of cliché you’d likely hear from a cheap old movie, but it really rings true for the band. With their eclectic mix of American folk and blues-rock, tinged with pop and country, it either sounds like a recipe for disaster or a genius combination. Luckily it falls to the latter description, and new album After It All is a step forward for the band.
The great thing about this record is when you try to pin it down to a genre. Once you think you’ve got it figured out, the next song comes along and blows your mind. There’s an essence of everything in here, all secured and taped down mostly with good old blues. Bottom of the River is Delta Blues to the core; stomps and shocks sit on a stripped back track set against soulful vocals and intense lyrics – the way blues should be. The atmosphere is perfectly set before building up to something more current, full and inventive.
Chasing Twisters’ western whistles remind you of vast plains of nothingness, before flickering vocals roll in and the sound bursts onto the scene with a kind of poppy Muse-inspired Knights of Cydonia (if you haven’t heard this Muse track, check it out on youtube). If you like more of a hip-hop beat, My Whole Life Long has you covered, but this is superseded by the excellent Scared. Plinking piano and big beats set the scene for a track filled with lost chances, lost love and inner turmoil: ‘Remember when you said you left me, remember when you said it’ll all work out’.
For all the records good work, there are only a couple of patches where it falls; Cold Day in Heaven just feels like typical pop that doesn’t stand out, and Your’e the One for Me sounds a little lost. But to pick on these tracks is hard to do – the only reason is the sheer quality of others makes them pale in comparison.
After It All is an album where the big guns rule, and rule they should. If you only end up liking a few tracks from this record, it’s worth the money because those tracks will astound and amaze you with their exuberance, honesty and relentlessness. Rest assured the band have upped their game with their record, and once those rough edges are polished, they have a big career ahead.
