Delivery will deliver their second album (barring any unexpected event) in January.
The Melbourne garage-punk band announced their new album, Force Majeure, this week, which will be released on Friday, January 17th through Heavenly Recordings. It’s the highly anticipated follow-up to their 2022 album Forever Giving Handshakes, which earned a place in our list of the Best Australian Albums of 2022.
Described in a press release as a “vital and concise record which thrills with its direct simplicity and excitement,” Force Majeure is Delivery’s first album following their recent signing to Heavenly Recordings, which has been a positive home for other developing Australian bands in the past, including King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Confidence Man.
According to bassist Bec Allan, the five-piece were “really conscious of having ebbs and flows on this album, of giving people a sonic break.”
“We wanted to put in different moods, have different singers, slow it down, make it groovy so it wasn’t just bang-bang-bang. Breaking things up was really important,” she says.
As guitarist James Lynch puts it, “There’s definitely something punk about keeping your cards close to your chest rather than being full on every second you’re playing. Dialling it back a bit is definitely part of our collective DNA these days.”
Above all, Force Majeure is a communal effort. “We always wanted to open the floor up to anyone who wanted to write a song for the band,” Allan reveals. “It was always meant to be collaborative, whoever is in the band. And while we definitely always like to make sure songs rock all the time, we always end up adding what we like to call James Lynch-isms.
“One of us would come up with a song with a good honest rock ’n’ roll verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure and James would listen to it and go, ‘What about if we do it this way.’ It immediately added a bit of spice and flavour. It’s what makes us different.”
Allan and Lynch are joined in Delivery by Liam Kenny (drums), Scarlett Maloney (guitarist), and Jordan Oakley (guitar), with all band members chipping in with vocals when a song calls for it.
On new single “Operating at a Loss,” which arrived this week alongside the band’s album announcement, Lynch leads from the front, singing about “the professional workplace” despite having never worked in a proper office.
“‘Operating at a Loss’ is what I imagine goes on around the professional workplace,” he says. “Lots of business jargon, dudes in suits climbing the corporate ladder, plenty of sentiments like ‘you’ve got to spend money to make money’ etc. To be fair, I do like that phrase although this song is more about the first component than the second one. I also like playing guitar, and on this occasion I made up some chords and told the band to play them on repeat so I could do a big solo.”
Force Majeure will also feature Delivery’s previous 2024 single, “Digging the Hole,” which was the first track thrown in the mix for their second album. “It definitely set the tone of things to come,” the band say of the track.
Before Force Majeure arrives next year, Delivery have various shows lined up around Australia over the coming months, including a showcase slot at SXSW Sydney on October 18th. They’re also set to return to the UK next month to support The Vaccines (find tickets and dates here).
Delivery’s “Operating at a Loss” is out now. Force Majeure is out January 17th via Heavenly Recordings / PIAS (pre-save/pre-order here).
