Emma Pollock Issue #33

Watch the Fireworks (4AD)

By John Everhart
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

Calling it a day at the peak of their career, the Delgados left behind a legacy that far outstripped their relatively meek album sales. They’re also known as much for what they did within the music industry (helming the preeminent indie label Chemikal Underground that introduced the world to the likes of Interpol and Mogwai) as for what they created artistically, which is a shame. Their records were flat-out great: hyper-melodic opuses that fused the grandiosity of early Mercury Rev with the innate pop instincts of R.E.M. The one upside of the breakup was that singer Emma Pollock found herself freed to focus on her long-gestating solo record Watch the Fireworks, a mesmerizing, deeply mature album that easily ranks with the best of her former band’s work.

Anthemic opener “New Land” wryly echoes “The Light Before the Land,” one of Pollock’s finest Delgados moments, in its vertiginous melodic sway, but most of this record is a marked stylistic departure. Superb first single “Adrenaline” is lent a visceral kick by some jagged Gang of Four-like arpeggios, while the minor key Byrds-via-Teenage Fanclub jangle number “Here Comes the Heartbreak” and the deft, slow-motion chamber ballad “Fortune” both shimmer gorgeously.

Closer “The Optimist” belies its title with cryptic hints of perfidy (“Now everyone’s smiling / Telling me I’ve got to trust you too”). It’s stark and vulnerable, with a serpentine melody that builds glacially, never reaching the bombastic apex the Delgados surely would have, instead providing a meditative, emotional apex for this fine record. Like a warm, assuring whisper in the dark, Fireworks is a more than welcome debut from a supremely gifted songwriter.