Advertise with The Big Takeover
The Big Takeover Issue #95
Recordings
MORE Recordings >>
Subscribe to The Big Takeover

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs


Follow Big Takeover on Facebook Follow Big Takeover on Bluesky Follow Big Takeover on Instagram

Follow The Big Takeover

Quaint Delusions - Anything Real? (self-released)

30 January 2025

Tampa Bay’s Quaint Delusions certainly have an interesting take on rock music. Sure, there is a well-established rock pulse beating at the heart of their music, but, to mix in another analogy, no one takes notice of a building’s brickwork when the overall sonic architecture is so beguiling. And so it is the case here: for all the four-four grooves and familiar guitar vibes, it is all those additional sonics that they array around this album that make it so interesting, exciting, mercurial, and marvelous.

And this departure from the tried and tested rock and roll approach is made apparent right from the opening track, “Killing What I Can’t Even See,” it has everything, everything you weren’t expecting, that is, – a descending cello(?) and overall raggle-taggle delivery gives things a late-Beatles/Lennon-esque feeling, it’s slightly psychedelic, loose and rootsy, overall sounding as if someone had been asked to sum up Austin in 1973 as a song, the sound of the rednecks, the jocks, the hippies and the cosmic cowboys all getting it on together.

“Anti-Lover” runs on a glam rock groove, “Postal Blowfish* is a wacky take on garage-rock; if garage rock had been invented by Elvis Costello in 1977, “Just One More” has a new wave vibe about it, a long lost Cars track perhaps and the title track is, unexpectedly, a lovely, lilting piano ballad.

It’s rock, Jim, but not as we know it. And that is the best kind. Dontcha think?

Website
Facebook