The Delines
★★★★ The Imperial DECOR. CD/DL/LP
Portland, Oregon country-soul act makes classy second album.
PENNED BY novelist and ex-Richmond Fontaine frontman Willy Vlautin, the short-story-like songs of The Delines portray bluecollar lives in crisis. If frontwoman Amy Boone sounds empathetic, it’s understandable: she was hit by a car that broke both her legs prior to finishing The Imperial, only adding her final contributions after a long and testing period of rehabilitation. If you were one of her bandmates, you’d have waited patiently, too. Boone’s rich, Rickie Lee Jones-meets-Chrissie Hynde voice is the careworn bedrock upon which these bruised, dynamics-rich songs depend, and never more so than on Roll Back My Life, a spartan and formidable meditation on regret. Eddie And Polly, an early Eagles-like tale of a young couple “Desperately in love/Desperate, and in love”, is as upbeat as The Imperial gets, but there’s no mistaking its pedigree. James McNair