Delivery – Forever Giving Handshakes

Here we go again, a wonderful surprise dropped into my inbox, and that was in the from of Aussie quintet Delivery, not to be confused with the 60’s blues band from Blighty, no this is a new and fresh sounding band, who play some Garage Punk, but with so many more quirky corners of their sound that will keep your ear twitching and wanting just to be lead on to the next song constantly.

For most us on the top side of the planet, this will be a brand new release, Forever Giving Handshakes was initially released back in 2022 down under, but thankfully for us they had have now gone global.   

From the first few bars of lead song ‘Picture This’ you’re grabbing for your Plant pot hat and bouncing around like a demented cat on a hot tin roof, the Devo sound is 100% there, but its spiced with added rock.  From this moment forward your experience is of an eclectic album that deserves every second of your precious time.

‘Poor-To-Middling Moneymaking’ drop in next, it shows just how this band can pull and push you around in different directions, its New Wave sound can only be mentioned here, you need to listen to get it entirely. This is promptly followed by what can only be described as the most ear worm song that I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of in such a long time, this comes in as ‘Baader Meinhof’ (which apparently is the phenomenon of once you have noticed something for the first time, you then have a tendency to notice it more and more often), who knew a once terrorist group from Europe would be this, wonderful synth pop classic slice of wonderfulness!

I read that the band thought this was a very rock leading album, but its only when you get to the likes of ‘No Homes’ or ‘Lifetimer’ that as a listener you become aware of this, its not rock in the safe way though, its more of a rock with some psychedelic/pop tendencies, or at least that’s how it felt to myself.

Its all the way to the end until you come across what could be the surprise best track on the album, ‘Best Western’ is one of those songs that on first listen, can feel very monotonous and dead pan, but its only after you get to the end, that actually you realise this is the point and then go back to enjoy the beauty of how ridiculously drab yet intricate all at the same time it really is.

From start to finish, this is an album that I for one will always be going back to and finding moments within it that both surprise and delight me, its been put, no thrown together, its a collection of songs that you might not normally imagine coexisting, its not a themed album, or an album that drives along with a narrative, its more spicy asian than comfort food, and that’s a great thing in my book.

Out now via Spoilsport Records and its also available on the bands own Bandcamp page.

Or drop over to the dark side on Spotify for full streaming