Interview with The Delerium Trees: ‘Maybe it’s the clowns in Westminster we’re having a swipe at on ‘Behind The Horizon’!’

Turriff, Aberdeenshire-based indie rock band, The Delerium Trees, brought out their third album, Underneath The Sun, last week, offering a mix of upbeat and more political tracks.

‘Behind The Sun’ sees the group return to familiar political territory, albeit in an upbeat manner. ‘We often have a swipe at politicians,’ said the band’s founding member, songwriter, vocalist and multi instrumentalist, Drew Jarvie. ‘Maybe it’s the clowns in Westminster we’re having a swipe at – they’re not liked up here!’

‘Underneath The Sun’, the title track, is a lockdown song, according to Jarvie. The band also consists of Jack Fox on drums. Jarvie formed The Delerium Trees after his former band, Perfect Stranger, split in 2001. He has played, toured and appeared with all types of bands, including brass bands and orchestras. Through the years he has appeared with Nazareth, Huw Lloyd-Langton (Hawkwind) and Then Jerico.

Overall, Underneath This Sun, has a lighter mood than its predecessor, Swimming With The Ghost Angels, which was released last year. ‘Catchy 2020’, an old song rewritten for the Sound of Spitfire’s second birthday and ‘Underneath This Sun’ are essentially positive songs. ‘America,’ by Leonard Bernstein, contains the original melodies with variations composed by Jarvie. This came about after a conversation with Chris Hyde of Sound of Spitfire who challenged Jarvie to come up with a different version. ‘It’s got 30,000 notes in it, it was a real undertaking!’ he said. ‘Everywhere’ is an electronica song dealing with green issues.

Recorded at Crackerbox Palace, this EP has much more brass involvement which is likely to continue with further releases, Jarvie said.

He cites bands such as Simple Minds, Nazareth, The Beastie Boys, Manic Street Preachers and ELO as his inspiration. As a classically trained pianist and trumpeter, he would also have loved to ‘have a good conversation with Henry Purcell’: ‘I’m a church organist, so I’d have liked to be able to talk to him about how he composed for the organ and brass. I’d like to collaborate with The Avalanches (an Australian electronic group), to have them remix our stuff and extend the melodies. That’d be interesting.’