THE DELINES : MR. LUCK & MS. DOOM

THE DELINES : MR. LUCK & MS. DOOM

Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom
Her Ponyboy
Left Hook Like Frazer
Sitting On The Curb
There's Nothing Down The Highway
Don't Miss Your Bus Lorraine
The Haunting Thoughts
Nancy & The Pensacola Pimp
Maureen's Gone Missing
JP & Me
Don't Go Into That House

Label : Decor Records

Release Date : February 7, 2025

Length : 40:28

Review (Americana UK) : Back on 15th May 2008, the extremely talented and very lovely Tift Merritt was playing an intimate gig at the National Centre for Early Music in York, when an audience member asked Merritt to play ‘Sunday‘, a song from her debut long player, “Bramble Rose“. Merritt responded, “You know that song’s a short novel?” referring to the song’s length. It’s interesting then that Willy Vlautin writes what are pretty much short novels for most of The Delines’ songs; the songs feature characters and situations that are believable and precisely described in the songs’ lyrics, it’s musical storytelling at its finest. Of course, Vlautin is also adept at penning the long form of novels, too, being the author of seven books, going back to “The Motel Life” in the mid-noughties, which was subsequently adapted for a film of the same name. One of Vlautin’s subsequent books, 2021’s “The Night Always Comes” spawned a soundtrack album by The Delines, for which a CD version came packaged with some editions of the book and a vinyl version followed as a strictly limited Record Store Day release in 2023. Described as a Portland-based country-soul band, The Delines are long-time favourites of Americana UK, and their numerous accolades include the record “The Sea Drift” being ranked the AUK Album Of The Year for 2022. The band was formed after Vlautin (originally from Reno, Nevada), heard Amy Boone singing; he decided to write songs for her to sing then asked her to start a band. The Delines are far more than simply a vehicle for Vlautin’s sublime lyrics however; their success is also formed around Boone’s amazing, expressive voice and her delivery to tell the stories, the sound textures and song arrangements, including keyboards, strings and horns. On to 2025 and “Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom“, which was recorded at Bocce Studios with long-time collaborator John Morgan Askew (who has also worked with artists such as Neko Case, M. Ward, Margo Cilker and Alela Diane). In addition to Vlautin’s guitar playing and Boone on vocals, the album features Sean Oldham on drums, Freddy Trujillo bass and Cory Gray who plays and arranges horns and keyboards. After a particular gig in Dublin, Boone said to Vlautin, “Listen man, you have to write me a straight up love song where no one dies and nothing goes wrong or I’m going to lose my mind.” Vlautin took the suggestion on board and responded by writing a romantic ballad about a failed criminal and a depressive house cleaner who somehow found each other; it became the LP’s opening song, ‘Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom‘. Vlautin admits to being a fan of ballads, particularly those written by Randy Newman and Tom Waits. ‘Her Ponyboy‘ is a tragic tale of a young couple travelling across the USA. Ponyboy Curtis was a fictional character in SE Hinton’s 1967 novel “The Outsiders” and the opening lines to the song are “She said he was her real life Ponyboy, I told her “Ponyboy was made up by a sixteen year old girl”“. Lead single from the album ‘Left Hook Like Frazier‘ is terrific; more uptempo than most others on the record, with the trumpet and electric piano prominent. The song is a tale of love (kind of), but about how women with broken hearts can sometimes get caught up in situations that break them even more; as Boone sings “She fell for a man who had a sadness he couldn’t beat, But she took care of him and put up with that still he dragged her into the deep, And that man in Tacoma kept her in a place for a while, He had a wife and kids, a left hook like Frazier and words that hit just as hard“. There are two songs about Lorraine on the record, the first, ‘Don’t Miss Your Bus Lorraine‘, is about a woman who is back in town after spending three years ‘downstate’ (in prison) due to marijuana convictions; she finds that while she has been away, things have moved on, to a point where marijuana is legal, but she can’t find a decent job due to her criminal record. The second single release is ‘The Haunting Thoughts‘; starting with a nice bass guitar line, it’s about a character reflecting on their life and her fears, closing with the lines “I try to remember that the haunting thoughts, Are just thoughts that are haunting me“. While ‘Nancy & the Pensacola Pimp‘ tells the fascinating story of a woman who gets revenge on the pimp who had controlled her since she was sixteen years old. ‘Maureen’s Gone Missing‘ is another uptempo song, with a 1960s feel, it’s driven along by the bass line and has a catchy, singalong chorus. The subject is a woman who robs a drug operation and skips town. The LP closes with the short ‘Don’t Go Into That House Lorraine‘ . We’re back with Lorraine and Boone repeatedly implores her not to enter ‘that’ house; one can only imagine what’s inside. The music adds to the sense of foreboding. This a high-quality record that deserves your attention; the songs are exquisite as usual, the arrangements and musicianship superb, and Boone is sounding better than ever on this release.

Review (Rocking Magpie) : When the Delines first appeared, I must admit, they were very much on the periphery of my radar – fast forward several years and I’ve now – without really trying – seen them half a dozen times in four different countries at a selection of festivals. For me, that live exposure was what clued me into the band’s wide-screen appeal. On this, their fourth full length album, they stretch into a world of couples who both win and lose at the game of love and relationships. Opening title track “Mr Luck & Ms Doom” errs on the side of a degree of positivity, although Ms Doom’s state of living in her car makes things somewhat relative in that respect. Musically it’s a soft soulful delight where the couple “always check out before it falls through”. “Her Ponyboy” is an even more laid-back, tragic tale of young wanderers who “shot dope in Louisiana” and lived various lives of varying sorts. It doesn’t end well, as you might expect – lovely piano and twangy solos turn it into the anti-“Virgin River” in tone. Previewed on last year’s touring run and initial public release from the album “Left hook like Frazier” is sonically jolly, but of course it’s not – ladies; beware falling for men who will mess you up even more. “Sitting on the Curb” which follows, drops down several emotional notches further with the opening line “Sitting on a curb watching our house burn down windows exploding, flames bringing it all to the ground what does she have that I don’t have?” – the fire metaphor continues throughout, of how relationships consume and destroy and Amy Boone’s philosophical soulful narrative adds a sense of inevitable resignation to the parable of things gone bad. Does it get any more cheerful? “There’s Nothing Down the Highway” doesn’t offer much hope, what with its road-vision of a darkening distance as low key piano and a distant trumpet add to the sense of loneliness and failure, “guilt and regret riding on their backs”. The gospel-like opening of “Don’t Miss Your Bus Lorraine” prefaces the conflicted tale of a woman who is trapped by a system where she was imprisoned for a crime that is no longer a crime – but can’t get a job, because she has a criminal record…the imperative of the title echoes the societal push for impossible expectations. Kudos to Willie Vlautin for coming up with that one. “The Haunting Thoughts” is all our wee-small hours keeping us awake reflections, in a song “I fall asleep before I have to get up anyway”, whereas “Nancy and the Pensacola Pimp” is a more specific cautionary revenge tale that would make a great crime drama. Musically, it’s more threatening in tone too, with the loud/Soft dynamics of the song reflecting the danger and threat in the tale. Another endangered lady is the subject of “Maureen’s Gone Missing” – this time, like a lot of the characters on this album, she’s on the run – from others and herself. This one’s a catchy delight on the chorus, although I can’t see the Radio 2 playlisters approving its sentiments of a fleeing drug operation….! “JP and Me” the penultimate track on the album is a Bonnie and Clyde-esque travelogue – partially celebratory and partially full of regret and echoes the oxymoronic themes of the album title well. The album ends with the stark musical warning of “Don’t Go Into That House Lorraine”. Lyrically, there’s nothing but the repeated title – as nothing else is needed -and it’s followed by minor key brass for the remainder of the one minute and thirty seven seconds of the song. It’s a deliberately shocking end-stop and offers little hope to the idea of salvation or succour in a relationship. Point noted, Mr Vlautin, point noted. “Mr Luck & Ms Doom” is the Delines at their dark, cinematic best. It’s not for the faint of heart, but an absolute delight for those with an appetite for musical and lyrical exploration and a vicarious taste for the darker side of this life. Beautifully scary.

Review (Uncut) : “Nothing good happens in a bar at night to a guy over fifty. It’s just a fact,” an old soak named RJ tells Al, the narrator of Willy Vlautin’s seventh novel, The Horse. Al, an ageing songwriter, hiding out in an abandoned mine in central Nevada, takes the advice to heart and resolves to quit the bar life and spend his time listening to old jazz records and Ennio Morricone soundtracks and writing brooding folk ballads on his harmonium, songs with titles like “Nancy & The Pensacola Pimp”. It’s one of a handful of songs that show up on Mr Luck & Ms Doom, The Delines’ sixth and finest album to date. Vlautin has always worked on the fertile borderlands or fault lines between fiction and song, and insists most of his novels are songs that somewhere along the way got a little out of hand. In fact, the last Delines album was a largely instrumental soundtrack to Vlautin’s novel The Night Always Comes (which in turn is soon to be a movie). But you’d have to reach for the likes of Bobbie Gentry’s Patchwork or Rickie Lee Jones’ Pirates, or indeed a film like Robert Altman’s Raymond Carver amalgam, Short Cuts, to find a world so rich and intimately strange. It was borne, apparently, out of singer Amy Boone’s desperation, after five albums of gas station meltdowns and trailer-park burnouts to sing “a straight up love song where no-one dies and nothing goes wrong”. As the resident singer in Delines-ville, a burg where broken hearts outnumber the stars in the sky, she surely knows that the chances of such a thing are rare as a Tucson snowglobe. But nevertheless Vlautin came up with the title track, the lush, lazy ballad of a luckless couple of drifters who roll up in St Augustine, Florida. Ms Doom is more used to sweeping hotel floors, but she sweeps him off his admittedly shaky feet, and their fledgling romance finds them wearing out rented mattresses all over town. You can hear the relish the band take with their tale: the piano, bass and guitar, slinking around the corner of every verse, like lovers sneaky-peteing past the motel checkout, Boone’s voice sweet and wry as a glass of bourbon for breakfast. Of course the mood can’t last – it reminds one a little of the precarious, hard-knock romance in Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves a couple of years ago – but even the hazy mirage of happiness is something to be treasured. You can see it glimmer like fools gold throughout the album – the moment where teenage lovers swim “naked in the San Juan River during a thunderstorm” in “Her Ponyboy”. Or the moment in “JP & Me” where the couple cross the Los Cruces Highway from their motel every morning, just to watch the colts. Even “Left Hook Like Frazier” – one woman’s sorry lovelife litany of boozers, losers and substance abusers – grooves like prime Curtis Mayfield, with Cory Gray’s scintillating horns emerging like sunshine in an Oregon January (weirdly a lot of the album is reminiscent of that strange mid-’80s interlude when Paul Weller and even Billy Bragg managed to marry tales of domestic abuse and political strife to the bluest of blue-eyed soul). But the heart of the record is that song from The Horse, “Nancy & The Pensacola Pimp”, sadly not featuring Al’s harmonium but a knife-edge performance from the band. It’s like a dream collaboration between Bobbie Gentry and Bobbie Ann Mason – or the kind of country song that Lucia Berlin might have written if she’d drifted through the Florida panhandle some time in the mid-’80s. The pimp is beanpole nightmare, 6 foot 5 and 110 pounds, living on Orange Crush, powdered donuts and seemingly inexhaustible meth-fuelled self-obsession. Nancy meanwhile is his teenage bride and meal ticket, smart enough to take notes while he’s blabbing, and wise enough to bide her time before decisively pursuing her own happiness. In a little over four minutes Vlautin, Boone and the boys take you on a road trip across the grand divide, from the casinos of Biloxi, Mississippi, right on up to the rodeos of Utah and somehow chart an entire continent of cruelty, desperation and clear-eyed determination. In USA 2025 it feels like a very timely tale.