Delay Trees – Doze (2012)

Delay Trees' self-titled debut album was one of the best Finnish debut albums ever released. I already wrote about that one quite recently and I didn't spare praises. Doze is the second album that, at least for me, had high expectations. Unfortunately the expectations are not really met on this album. I'm not saying it's not a good album, because it is. I'm just saying that it doesn't fully capture the magic of the first album. I guess it's because on this second album, the main focus is on the sounds and experimentation, rather than on melodies. What I loved about the first album was how very simple melodies had been made to sound magical by the aid of lots of echo and delay. I like simple melodies. They give birth to something primitive inside our brain that makes us feel pleasure when we can predict what comes next.



When I had just bought Doze, I didn't listen to it much in a long time. Most likely because of the things I mentioned above. But I have to say that I had underestimated this album. It does have some spectacular moments when you just give it a chance. It doesn't open up that quickly. I'm glad I'm doing this blog, because now that it made me come back to this album, I enjoy it a lot more than previously.

When this album was fairly new, I had just moved to London and the city was still mostly foreign to me and I didn't know that many people from here. I saw that Delay Trees was coming to play at The Lexington between King's Cross and Angel, but I couldn't get anyone to join me to the gig, so I went alone. That was probably one of the first times ever I went to a gig alone. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would've. I bought the album from one of the band members after the gig and I had a discussion with them outside the pub. We know some same people from Helsinki. That experience made me appreciate the band on a new level.

The album begins with a song Decide, which still sounds a lot like the first album. It's slow, full of echo and delay and it grows slightly towards the end. I feel like this song could be a leftover from the first album, because after it the mood of the album changes slightly. Dream Surfer has more psychedelic tones than the first album did. In addition to bands like Mazzy Star, this song is looking back into the 60s. HML does even more so. There is a stronger tempo and beats in this song, which makes it sound like many indie rock bands in Helsinki in the mid-00s. Glacier gets a bit more experimental and there's even quite a hypnotic bass line, which I like since on previous songs the bass has stayed in the background. I also like the chiming guitars in the beginning of the song. Pause is a long, over 8 minute song, where the band gets to leave lots of air between notes and experiment a little. There are even some analog synths in this song. Future is completely different from anything else we have heard from the band so far. There is a proper rock tempo and drums come out much stronger than in any other song. This song gets the album out of dream pop into full-on indie rock. Moment de Piano is a scary instrumental bit that sounds like some modern art exhibitions. It leads straight to Only the Stars, which takes us back to Delay Trees' more conventional sounds after a jazzy beginning. The album ends with My Thoughts where there are distorted singalongs over lo-fi instruments.

I don't know if this is actually a real music video or something a fan made, but it's nice anyway. The video for HML shows the home town of the band, Hämeenlinna, in pictures that have been made to move to the music.

Delay Trees doesn't make new music anymore as far as I know, but the almost ten years they were together were pretty good. It's one of the recent proofs that something really special can also now come from my home country. For a long time that didn't seem possible, but now there are lots and lots of bands and artists that should really make it internationally as well. I'm glad I got another shot with this album, because it's a lot better than what I remembered.

Listen to the album on Spotify.