Delays - Hooray
Hooray is the sound of a smile; a fixed, crazed grin. With the kind of cacophonic orchestration you’d expect to find on a candidate for Christmas number one, it certainly packs a punch. But this is not the utterly absorbing dancey greatness that characterised hits from the previous album such as Valentine and Hideaway, or even the infectious Love Made Visible, from the same album as Hooray - Join the Rush. Instead it overloads the brain with noise in brazen ignorance of the fact that this does not help the track rest comfortably on the ears. Hooray marks a progression for Delays, a change of direction from the overpowering electronics that characterised the previous album. But it also marks a change of record label, from - everyone’s favourite indie label - Rough Trade to the relatively-unheard-of Fiction. Ultimately a good track, it fails to tick a couple of boxes through sheer weight of noise.