Delorentos – Night Becomes Light | review
Delorentos have made a huge mistake.
In a time when pop music consists of making videos full of shaking arses and songs that are actually about shaking arses, Delorentos have decided to make a pop record. Except they failed because the lads basically never shake those fine money-makers. They’ve made a pop record that isn’t modern pop. Fools the four of them.
They’ve gone and made an album on which every song is a potential single. Every song has a hook or a melody that you want to hear on the radio when you drive home from work. Every song on this misinformed album wants to hug you or dance with you.
Why do their songs want to dance with me? And why do their songs end?
Night Becomes Light is a beautiful album. It’s feckin’ beautiful. You can tell it was made with love, and it will continue to be played with love. I think the album is coming on to me. Especially ‘Too Late’. That song is all about me. I can see you staring at me number 5. It would be creepy if it wasn’t so damn adorable. It’s an inherently old-feeling song, but modern. Old and classic, but unheard. It’s sung with a great, strong voice while a guitar excites itself in the background. My ears smiled and my heart floated briefly on hearing the positivity in the first line “tomorrow’s too late to tell you how I feel about you,” and the last line, “Oh, what a beautiful world.”
The overall theme is about “growing up and becoming an adult” as Ronan Yourell, singer and guitarist, says in the Hotpress interview, which, they’re also on the cover of. But there is a whole lot of love on this album. Relationships beginning and ending, new families (‘Home Again’ is about Kieran McGuinness becoming a father), and love of Dublin, despite itself. There’s a lot of love and that’s what it feels like. It builds and builds, each new layer adding to the texture of that ultimate, all-encompassing emotion.
[youtube id=”XBkofyZgbG0" align=”center” autoplay=”no” maxwidth=”702"]
‘Show Me Love’, the lead single from Night Becomes Light, gripped me the first time I heard it. I dance with it most days and the video is also exceptional. This album is full of songs that can fill large venues and you know that’s where Delorentos are supposed to be. They’ve always had some big songs, they’ve improved consistently over the years which was proved with their Choice Music Prize winning album Little Sparks in 2012. And now they continue, incremental improvements, tweak this, shine that, and here they are, their fourth and possibly best album to date?
This is not Kid A. Delorentos go through life gaining experience and applying it to their craft. That’s what this album is about. They are an evolution. They don’t throw out the Delo textbook at the end of recording each album to start anew on the next one, they keep them, continuously add to their library and become ever wiser. Night Becomes Light is a sophisticated album. The lads have done it again.
Night Becomes Light is out in Ireland on the 10th of October.
Featured Image Source: thedock.ie
