Pitchfork

The Delgados were the designated drivers of the mid-1990s Scottish pop uprising. While their friends were busy becoming indie rock heavyweights (Mogwai) or fielding record deals from the Beastie Boys (Bis), the Delgados were the responsible ones who woke up early in the next morning to mail out those other bands’ promos-- just one part of their daily duties running the redoubtable Chemikal Underground label. But it’s no understatement to say that without the Delgados’ guiding hand, those bands would’ve been hard-pressed to get heard outside out of Glasgow; remember, this was at the height of Britpop-- Alex Kapranos was just a guy playing keyboards part time in Urusei Yatsura, while London major-label A&R reps were looking for the next Oasis in Wales. But if the Delgados’ fanbase was relatively modest in size, it did include the most important fan a fledgling indie act could ask for: late BBC broadcaster John Peel, who-- judging by this impressive 2xCD, 29-song Peel Session collection-- seemed to invite the band to his Maida Vale studios whenever The Fall weren’t available.

The spirit of the Peel Session-- the opportunity for bands to test-drive new material prior to release or mess around with cover versions-- serves the Delgados’ music especially well, and The Complete BBC Peel Sessions provides valuable insight to their eight-year, five-album evolution from typical Sonic Youth/Pavement-worshipping distorto-rock junkies to soft-rock sophisticates. The first disc shows that the aesthetic leap from the adrenalized noise-pop of 1996’s Domestiques to the highlands pastorales of 1998’s Peloton was not nearly as unexpected as it seemed at the time: from the first session here (actually recorded for a Radio Scotland program before being rebroadcast on Peel’s show), Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock’s signature lilting melodies and wry vocal interplay-- like Steve Malkmus trying to pick up Kim Deal-- were already in full effect; the difference between Domestiques’ “Primary Alternative” and Peloton’s jolly “The Arcane Model” is the latter has less fuzz and more flutes. As Woodward recounts in his winsome liner notes, it was a July 1997 Peel Session-- an experiment with acoustic arrangements and string players-- that inspired the Delgados to trade in noise for nuance.

And it’s the Peloton-era songs (comprising the bulk of disc one) that provide this collection with its most inspired moments, capturing a band hitting its stride and brimming with confidence with each new song; the superior takes of “Everything Goes Around the Water” and “The Weaker Argument Defeats the Stronger” possess a forcefulness that their more reserved album versions only hint at. The Delgados’ next album, 2000’s Dave Fridmann-produced The Great Eastern, was arguably their greatest, so it’s somewhat disappointing that it’s only represented by a single four-song session (though the versions of “No Danger” and “Aye Today” prove those songs don’t need Fridmann’s Bonham-esque bombast to connect). The Delgados would continue on the orchestro-rock trajectory with 2002’s Hate before scaling back for 2004’s uneven Universal Audio, but the second disc here bears little evidence of these developments. As The Delgados’ music grew more serious, their Peel Sessions seemed to get more silly: the September 2002 set shows them to be the rare band that can cover ELO (“Mr. Blue Sky”), Dead Kennedys (“California Uber Alles”), and Cat Stevens (“Matthew and Son”) with equal abandon.

However, the final Universal Audio-era session in September 2004-- highlighted by Woodward’s affectingly stark “Is This All That I Came For?” and a stern cover of Ewan MacColl’s “Ballad of Accounting”-- feels almost presciently somber: Peel would pass away a month later; bassist Stewart Henderson would leave the Delgados the following April, portending the dissolution of the band. Though The Complete BBC Sessions is not a definitive Delgados collection-- there’s no “Monica Webster” or “Akumulator” or “American Trilogy” or “All You Need Is Hate”-- it stands as a lovingly compiled tribute to two greatly admired and greatly missed UK pop institutions.