Deloro
Deloro
(ide fixe records)
The transition to cold weather in Toronto seems simple enough. We know what to expect: comfort in confined rooms, worn-out boots, higher-than-normal electricity bills, and cravings for red meat and carbohydrates (and, ahem, whiskey). Pools and patios become pipe dreams. We cower beneath our Hudson’s Bay blankets, drinking spiced beverages and cradling our lovers. Leaves fall slowly, and then the snow comes. It’s coming.
The Hudson’s Bay blanket thing? That’s the fantasy that plays out in my mind. The collective reality is less dream-like and more hard-edged. We slip on the ice on the way to work. We forget our gloves. My headphones blare cold-centric Joni Mitchell. It’s a time for sadness and adjustment. Still, it’s also a time for re-evaluation and I’ve decided that I’m adding Deloro’s capricious self-titled record to my fall rotation. It will be welcome company for the coming mini-tragedies.
Deloro are something of a Toronto super-group made up of One Hundred Dollars’ Paul Mortimer and Dave Clarke, local folk singer Jennifer Castle, The Constantines’ Dallas Wehrle, and visual artist/musician Tony Romano. Their “super”-ness is evident from just seconds of listening; they’ve crafted an album that takes on those confused seasonal feelings and channels them into something vulnerable, but relatable. “Country,” the album’s central track, is a masterpiece of layered, buttery vocals coupled with down-home guitars that conjure up visions of cedar wood, Elizabethan clawfoot bathtubs, and insomniac nights.
There’s enough musical diversity on Deloro, making it perfect for both late-afternoon city walks and late-night, wine-addled painting sessions. Songs range from backdoor garage-rock jams (“Take Me As I Am”) to ballads of drawn-out paranoia (“No Fun”). “Nostalgia R.I.P” showcases the group’s lyrical strength, examining love’s inherent contradictions. It climaxes with the line: “The city can’t hold me the way that you do.”
Deloro, please give me the strength I need to get through the coming fall and winter seasons. Let my idealistic visions of happily huddling under Canadian wool blankets be true! I promise I will make you my fall/winter soundtrack.
