Five Is The Number

“Kind of what this album was about was experimenting with sound and soundscapes and making sure we didn't lose the song in the middle of that. We're always really about the song when it comes down to it.”

Delta Spirit bass player Jonathan Jameson is calling from his apartment in Brooklyn, NYC, as far from their original hometown San Diego, as you get and still be on the continent, as have four of the five members, talking about the third and self-titled album from the band he and drummer Brandon Young formed in 2005 around original guitarist Sean Walker, singer and songwriter Matt Vasquez, who they spotted busking one morning, and keyboards player Kelly Winrich, who'd originally been hired as their producer. Delta Spirit is certainly a quantum shift from their previous two albums, though that's not necessarily how Jameson sees it.

“To us I guess it feels pretty natural. It's a progression that has been slowly taking place over the seven or so years of us being in a band. I guess it's funny with bands because when you're looking from the outside you hear one album and in a few years there's another album and, you know, the whole time in between that life is going on, people are discovering new things and new music and moving to other sides of countries – things change, perspectives shift and to us it felt really natural.

“To be honest, also, another huge thing that happened was we got a new member, our new guitar player Will [McLaren], and whenever someone new comes in you have to adjust and learn how to write and react to them musically, and speaking of riffy parts, we never really had a guitar player that sort of took pride in being a guitar player and really wanted to lift that element of the band to a new level, and Will really has done that, and so I guess it's just been a lot of different things.

“The main thing that made this album feel so good to me and I think to all of us is just, we only had four members for a while and we're so used to having five that it never really felt right to just jam and play music with four of us – it didn't sound good to us. The last album [2010's History From Below] before this we just kind of went into the studio and started demo-ing, which is cool and had its moments, but there's something about just sitting in a room with, you know, the five guys in your band and playing songs until you know that you love them, and you don't know you love them right away – it takes a while, you know, trying different things and all of a sudden something clicks and you can tell that everyone is engaged and comes to life, and when that happens, when five people get on the same wavelength, it is kind of like a magical, spiritual moment, and that was what was really exciting about making this record, three months of just laying that groundwork of finding songs and music that we all were excited about.”

Delta Spirit will be playing the following shows:

Friday 18 January - Big Day Out, Sydney NSW
Sunday 20 January - Big Day Out, Gold Coast QLD
Friday 25 January - Big Day Out, Adelaide SA
Saturday 26 January - Big Day Out, Melbourne VIC
Monday 28 January - Big Day Out, Perth WA