Daytrotter's Best 15 Albums of 2007: No. 9 Delta Spirit's "Ode To Sunshine"
Jan 10, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Brendan Kiefer
There’s no guilt associated with my cutting and pasting a portion of the Delta Spirit album bio below to describe the reasons that we think _Ode To Sunshine_ is one of the finest albums to have been released during the 365 days of 2007. Kindly, I was asked to write the piece that became the San Diego band’s official record bio earlier in the year and spending hours with a rough copy of the album - still tacked onto the beginning of one of the songs was a false start where one of the band members freaks out over a spider - gave me the time to appreciate the five-piece for what it is and what it can be. There is more alive in each of these five soulful dudes than there is alive in a plastic ball pit full of innocent little kids at a carnival. They feel free to dream big, to anger over injustices and inequalities and they rejoice in all of the bright, warming things that happen on more of a regular basis than most cynics or optimists give credit to. They’ll give you their own music and they’ll trade you for an album of a live Sam Cooke show that they insist you must hear. It’s music that can change you in the nicest ways, make you a little happier, a little more alive. Cooke sings, "Don’t fight it, baby, feel it," hence we have Delta Spirit’s _Ode To Sunshine_.
"There's a scene in Murray Lerner's film ("Festival"), about the 1963 Newport Music Festival, where Peter, Paul and Mary are shown obliging a resounding call for an encore with the protest song, "If I Had A Hammer." Peter and Paul face each other from the sides and Mary faces the audience of tens of thousands, shaking her blonde hair and bearing down on a song about making change. She would, they would hammer out danger and a warning all over the land. Delta Spirit have five hammers and they swing them the way Mary bobbled her head back in '63 for her close-ups, the way Mary sang as if her knees were on fire and her mouth was brimming with more ire laced with optimism than she knew what to do with. These Californians have more in common with the dirty haired, dirty fingernailed folk groups of the nascent years than they do any of their contemporaries. They're suited for reminiscent hopefulness and the gracefully youthful fusion of hostility and all-encompassing passion for all things that can set a smile ablaze or turn the hairs on arms and backs of necks into little beds of nails at the flick of a switch. They make lists of things they like, including all of the people they love, their home, pretty girls, desserts, bodies of water, justice and America. They believe there's still hope for it and in all of the rooms contained within the hallways of the band's newest offering, _Ode To Sunshine_, they make you understand that, when it's all boiled down, what we all ultimately live for is catharsis and a fulfillment of body meeting land, air and sea harmoniously. They're about bodies meeting bodies, pressing skins to skins. They're about reminding you to listen more than you talk. They're about urging you to put stock in the happiness of others, not just your own. They make it obvious that we have to go somewhere to be somewhere. We have to feel something to really live. They sing of the soul searchers. They sing for the soul searchers. They are the soul searchers."
*Daytrotter's Best 15 Albums of 2007*
15. John Vanderslice -- _Emerald City_
14. The National -- _Boxer_
13. These United States -- _The Forest and the Garden_
12. The Teeth -- _You're My Lover Now_
11. Dr. Dog -- _We All Belong_
10. Brother Ali -- _The Undisputed Truth_
9. Delta Spirit -- _Ode To Sunshine_
"Delta Spirit's Daytrotter Session":http://www.daytrotter.com/article/741/free-songs-delta-spirit
"Delta Spirit Official Site":http://www.deltaspirit.net
"Delta Spirit MySpace Site":http://www.myspace.com/deltaspirit
