The Delgados’ new album, Hate (Mantra/Beggars Banquet), gives the Scottish middle finger to the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. Both Dave Fridmann-produced albums rock the tabernacle with gossamer pop melodies, a heavy/heavenly orchestra and a Bonham-dwarfing drum sound that’s too big for your speakers. But whereas the Lips are waitin’ for a superman, the Delgados—singers/guitarists Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock, bassist Stewart Henderson and drummer Paul Savage—are sitting in a Glasgow pub with their mates in Arab Strap and Mogwai, getting pissed and mocking those who’d go blind staring up at the sky. “You ask me what you need,” sings Woodward amid a hopeful swell of strings, “Hate is all you need.”
On the eve of the Delgados’ recent U.K. tour, MAGNET equipped Henderson and Woodward with three stamps and a disposable camera. Next time we’ll send scarves and aspirin.
In the spirit of transatlantic bridge-building, we, the Delgados, are granting you, the nosy bastard readers of MAGNET, a voyeuristic glimpse into our touring adventures. While we may not offer the promise of picaresque tales involving wine, women and song, we can at least let you see some skanky photographs of us looking as rough as a badger’s arse and grant you access to our PlayStation 2 habits.
This is a short tour for us. Seven days and seven shows around the U.K.: Leeds, Manchester, London, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle and then back home to Glasgow. A full day of rehearsals in Glasgow was erratic to say the least, finishing at 9 p.m. with a trip to the store for beer and wine and some quick commando-like sorties into some nearby pubs for a couple of pints “for the road.”
The beauty of tour-bus travel is that it brings out the child in you: We’d liken a tour to one long sleepover at a friend’s house while their parents are away—illicit binging of alcohol, round-the-clock sessions on PS2 and the ritual consumption of shite fast food (crisps, kebabs, pot noodles, chocolate). All amounting to you coming off tour with the complexion of a camel, smelling like a turd on legs and nursing fucked kidneys that ache every time you blink.
Leeds, January 29
Henderson: Looking well-scrubbed and lacking practice, we took to the stage at Leeds and played a pretty scrappy set by our standards (as shameful a thing as that is to admit). But the crowd were mercifully understanding and chose to hold on to their beer bottles rather than scudding them across our furrowed brows as we tried to remember how to play our songs. This was admittedly an aberration on our part, as we’re normally pretty good live. It was probably first-night nerves, although everyone else seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. We’ll consider this gig our “get out of jail free” card.
Good things about Leeds, though, are that lots of Alun’s friends live there and they have good record shops, so although he was so drunk he sicked up the entire contents of his stomach, he got drunk with friends and had great records to vomit with.
Manchester, January 30
Woodward: Now you would think I’d have a hangover after the previous night’s activities, but miraculously, I woke up feeling truly fucking magic—and this never happens to me. I tend to get drunk and really suffer for days, but not this time. Breakfast with Charlie (Cross, the viola player)—actually, it was 3 p.m. so it was lunch—was truly repulsive. Now I believe that the world considers Britain to have the worst diet, blandest food, etc., and maybe that’s right, but this was rancid even by our standards: a veggie burger, onion rings and baked beans, all of which tasted like old fish. New fish would be bad enough, but old fish was too much. When I complained, the woman laughed and said she agreed and would never eat there. No refund, nothing. Just some wizened old crow laughing and telling me to bugger off.
After the calamity that was Leeds, we practiced for the rest of the afternoon and soundchecked for a couple of hours and played a good set with few mistakes. (Stewart imposed a fining system on himself—50p a mistake—and ended up with a respectable debt of £3.50.) After the show, we hit an after-hours bar and prepared for the bus journey down to London. For a country that isn’t unfamiliar with snow, it’s bizarre that when a few flakes drizzle onto the pavement it constitutes some sort of national emergency. A 40-mile traffic jam backs into London, causing jack-knifed lorries, fighting in the streets and wanton raping and pillaging as panic sets in under the drifting white death.
London, January 31
Henderson: Anyway, we got into London without a problem and wandered around the icy streets, the sound of shattering, octogenarian hip bones echoing like gunshots. London gigs bring their own unique kind of anxieties, and we inevitably end up feeling pretty nervous about them. This gig was no different, and as we’re shitting ourselves so much, we inevitably end up raising our game and playing a good show. Shepherd’s Bush Empire is a great venue, and it’s the first time we’d played there. The bus couldn’t stay outside, so we were deprived of pummeling the shit out of each other on PS2 game Rocky. The after-show party was apparently great, but red wine is a wonderfully bad thing and I didn’t notice the party going on around me. I did meet three old friends from university, so it wasn’t a complete fuck-up.
Brighton, February 1
Woodward: I woke up fully clothed in the lounge the next morning, so I wandered out to the bus at 6:30 and was amazed to see the sea at Brighton. It was Baltic, but I was drawn to the shoreline. Not realizing in my daze that the waves were fucking massive, I realized how big they were when a gigantic, freezing breaker said hello to my cold, shivering body. I fucked off back to the bus, accidentally spat a huge bit of phlegm on an already distressed pigeon, got changed into dry, warm clothes and fell asleep reading Deadenders by Ed Brubaker.
