Concorde 2, Brighton, January 20
“NICE sunset this evening,” Emma Pollock pauses to reflect, midway through this deeply emotional set. “It’s just wonderful walking about, knowing you’ve got a show after 18 years tonight, in a band you were once in…”
The Delgados split in 2005 following bassist Stewart Henderson’s departure, exhausted by a decade of effort without ever quite getting the “attention or respect” he felt they deserved. Chemikal Underground, the label they founded in a Glasgow tenement flat in 1994 (and still run to this day), seemed to outshine the band at first, as it launched the, their sweetly sung, string-laden arrangements, shot through with both sadness and defiant exaltation, had carved their own distinguished place in Scottish pop.
