Chemikal Underground
2006
The Complete BBC Peel Sessions
About This Album
The Delgados' Complete BBC Peel Sessions is a fascinating look at one of the more easy to underrate indie rock bands of the late '90s/early 2000s -- easy because everything they did was so consistently good. There was never a shocking development to force uninitiated listeners to sit up and take notice, and never a defining moment -- just the kind of steady near-brilliance that is often overshadowed by blinding flashes of hype. Beginning with a 1995 Scottish radio session that John Peel heard and rebroadcast on his show, the disc shows the growth and development of the Delgados as their career continued. On their first two sessions (from 1995 and 1996), they were a jagged, jangling, high-energy indie rock group with strong hooks -- sort of like a Technicolor Wedding Present. If they had kept up in this direction, they may have made a couple of interesting albums and then faded, but as 1997's session shows, they began to add extra instrumentation and experiment with new sounds and textures. Tracks like "Pull the Wires from the Walls" and "The Arcane Model" are just as exciting and raw as their earlier songs, just with a lighter and more theatrical touch. Though their 1998 session steps away from the orchestration of the previous session, it makes use of dramatic dynamics, and songs like the aching "Don't Stop" give an inkling of the heights the band was getting set to reach.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2 and 6)

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Disc 2 (try track 1)

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