Magic Falls As Raindrops

Scott Jones on Lucky Delucci at Cardiff's Clwb Ifor Bach

16th May, 2008

Under the scenic cliffs, the Rhondda valley really is a deluxe shite-hole, an unhealthy 80% at least of its population happy to spend all of their time on sunbeds and all of their money on steroids, speeding along with “go faster” stripes on their cars and heads, grinning, gurning and wanting to start a fight with their own mother if she was small enough. But something is going down, there’s the faintest scent of magic in the air, and if you’ve got your wits about you the scent will lead you to stray somewhere from the beaten track, somewhere into a realm where magic falls as raindrops.

I follow the scent and tonight in Cardiff witness a miracle called Lucky Delucci. Right from the start melodies unravel like silk, high pitched guitar and keyboard lines emerge though the sweet drum and bass beats to provide lush platforms for lead-man Josef Prygodzicz’s love-struck and beautifully affectionate lyrics, and it’s so good I want to touch it. Prygodzicz really is a tremendous songwriter in the outsider Pop lineage that runs from Vic Godard through to Jesse Budd, and seems to have found some sort of recipe for creating perfect Pop songs that shine like the sun.

Daniel Jones’ melodies on bass are an underplayed funky dream, and Rich Chitty not only adds the lush drumbeats but some outr・ glockenspiel sounds that trickle like Pop nectar. ‘Swings and Roundabouts’ is, for loss of other words, just a superb Pop song, Josef’s lyrics of “once upon a time you loved me/thought I’d won the lottery/it all got too much for me/wanted to do cartwheels/run around in green fields/underneath the moon beams/till I fell down to my knees” magically capturing the simple feelings of love and youth as the melodies roll like dreams.

‘House of the Lost Souls’ skips and rolls along with great lines about escaping loneliness and heartbreak, swaying with Jones’s Flipron-esque, funky and haunting bass line, another perfectly crafted Pop nugget of the type to make you want to write their name in blood. Lucky Delucci have sleeve-fulls of them, tonight going through them with consideration, affection and wonder, and as they announce that ‘Fire’ is to be their last one, I’m left wondering where the time has gone.

But it’s a great final blow, Jones’s bass and Josef’s guitar lines quite superb as the lyrics again bite with perfect snaps; it’s all here, an Arcade Fire-esque drum beat, the backing vocals with echoes of playful girl group grace, ‘Fire’ is a twirling, cascading, sunny monster of a Pop song that at the moment is my favourite tune of all time, one that should be packing out disco floors everywhere while The Fratellis rot in hell.

So, suddenly it’s over, and I don’t think they’ve even played ‘Young in Summer’, or ‘Bubblegum Milkshake’. I was more than willing to miss the last train back into the valleys wilderness that Lucky Delucci miraculously escaped from unharmed to hear them, but it wasn’t to be. So I set off and embark on the thug-speckled journey back into the otherwise beautiful mountains, wondering just how it was possible for a band like this to emerge, untainted, unharmed, and full to the brim with the magic of Pop. There’s a rainbow over the mountains with Lucky Delucci written on it.

© 2008 Scott Jones

© Miwsig