Debut albums can be queer beasts. Sometimes an outfit you’ve championed since their first fledgling live appearances, an act who you know have the raw potential and the songs to be real contenders, end up choking in the studio, with the resulting album falling far short of doing justice to their talent. In Love With Detail, however, is not such an album. This perfectly encapsulates all that’s great about Delorentos over the course of a dozen, short, sharp, perfectly honed guitar pop tunes.
Delorentos have matured over the last few years from exuberant guitar hopefuls into the real deal – their performance at last year’s Hard Working Class Heroes was the highlight of the entire festival for my money. If they happened to habitate around the pubs and markets of Camden and not the stout-stained streets of our capital city, the quartet would have been snapped up long ago by one or other record company behemoth. Ironically, their relative independence has worked in their favour, allowing Kieran, Ronan, Niall and Ross to develop at their own pace, with the result that this is as fine a debut as we could have hoped for.
Their twin-guitar assault works perfectly, morphing from charming, through chiming and onto challenging, sometimes in the course of the same song. The fact that they’re possessed of two talented lead vocalists is also in their favour, especially since Kieran’s and Ronan’s voices complement each other so well. When this sort of full-frontal jab is backed up by the kind of solid percussive platform that most British bands would trade their skinny jeans for, the result is a perfect formula for creating instantly hummable, achingly catchy, toe-tappingly wonderful pop music like the uber-insistent ‘Do You Realise’ or the instantly familiar ‘Hands Off The Boy’, shouty chorus and all.
Their incredible debut single ‘Leave It On’ sounds as fresh now as it did the first time I laid ears on it, as delicious and innocent a description of the first rush of love as has ever been penned: “Yes it would be perfect if we kissed/But I’ll be satisfied with this/For I am having such a wonderful time right now”.
Follow-up singles ‘The Rules’, complete with the almost-perfect chorus, and the so-tense-it’s-barely-constrained ‘Basis Of Everything’ are also present and correct, but the most surprising thing about In Love With Detail is that most of the other nine tracks are equally impressive, with the possible exception of ‘Eyes Open’, a ballad which owes a lot more than its title to Snow Patrol: and yet that song would form the highlight in many lesser bands' repertoires.
Album opener ‘Any Other Way’ may begin like a plaintive plea to a love that could’ve been, but once the guitar caterwauls into the frame, it’s pretty clear that this is anything but by the book: rarely has soul-searching sounded so incendiary. ‘Eustace Street’ is not about finding directions to the IFI: instead, it’s a raw and real examination of the aftermath of a failed relationship, delivered with panache rather than self-pity. Then there’s the raucous ‘Stop’, the galloping ‘Waiting’ and the bitter-sweet closer ‘Idle Conversation’.
Lyrically, Delorentos prove capable of injecting some seriously concise couplets into the equation. Rarely has a put-down sounded as eloquent as “This cold concoction you’ve become/All sneer and sinew” (‘Hands Off The Boy’). But overall, it’s the sheer infectiousness of the melodies, the singalong choruses and the spiralling middle eights that will really win you over. In Love With Detail is the sound of a band realising their potential. It’s the first truly great Irish album of 2007 and the finest debut from a homegrown act in years.