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This mesmerizing new album is not only the debut of the year, it could be the best release of 2008. Delta Spirit is a fivesome from Southern California, San Diego-style, and is powerfully possessed by the high holy spirit of rock & roll. One quick tip that greatness is written large through these songs is just how mixed-up it all sounds. There are influences galore that jump out, usually at unexpected moments, but everything is so overwhelmingly fine it seems trite to try and pin those influences down. So much new music sounds calculated now, like the artists know by including certain things their audience will respond in kind. That defeats the whole purpose why we chase their illusive truths, and tries to give lie there should be so much more than meets the ear if we’re going to devote our time and feelings when listening. Delta Spirit doesn’t bother with small pursuits, though they recorded Ode To Sunshine in a cabin, and don’t appear to worry too much about perfection, either. What the band is able to do with a semi-ragged instrumental attack and Matthew Vasquez’s stabbing vocals is capture the intensity of brimstone preachers minus the bombastic platitudes of organized religion, and take us down the path to be baptized in clear warm water. They are humanists of a natural order by their own invention and in putting a photo of a beaming doctor of entomology on their album cover, one that specializes in the study of the bark beetle, show how much they care. And while no one knows why, the seventh song on so many albums holds the deepest clues, and this one is no different. “People Turn Around” feels like open-heart surgery, and anyone who can listen all the way through and stay sedate should trade this album in for ABBA’s Greatest Hits immediately and call it a day. Really.
