After three years of touring on 2010 LP Subiza's resplendent builds and easy choruses, the Spanish dance pop band Delorean returned to Barcelona and built a studio for themselves. The result, Apar, is a more refined and patient effort.
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Meet the calmer, more measured Delorean. The band who once named an EP after a legendary race car driver has chosen to name their third album after a Basque word for "froth," sending thousands of music journalists scrambling to find a synonym for "froth." (Recommended: "spindrift.") After three years of touring on Subiza's resplendent builds and easy choruses, the band returned to Barcelona and built a studio for themselves. Terms like "analog production" have been tossed around, and the band has replaced their feel-good sampledelia with Actual Female Vocalists, including contributions from Chairlift's Caroline Polachek and Glasser. Singer Ekhi Lopetegi is coming off a turbulent breakup and is studying for his doctorate in philosophy. "It was a really normal life," Lopetegi said of Apar's recording process.
Some restraint was probably in order. Subiza's anthems found the band exploring the limits of their manufactured expanse. There was a thinness to their sound, like a strong gust could tear it apart. Apar takes pains to correct this. The tracks are sturdier and more patient. Lopetegi's delivery, no longer caked in reverb, is noticeably more confident and refined. On songs like "Destitute Time" he picks his spots, emphasizing lyrics that, while still difficult to parse, seem to be traversing topics broader than general good vibes. His role on Subiza was as a glorified hypeman for the band's twinkling rush; on Apar he's more akin to a traditional rock frontman, which moves the band still further away from the club music that underpinned Subiza.
The band does find some new avenues to explore. "Unhold", which features Polachek as lead vocalist, is a bold pop song that sounds like someone blowing the Cocteau Twins up to billboard size. "Destitute Time" is a graceful rock song that accelerates through its chorus and requires no arms-in-the-air bridge to amplify its coda. Similarly, "You Know It's Right" generates most of its speed with simple guitar arpeggios and suggests Delorean might be capable of indie rock as sweet, simple, and confident as New Order's "Run 2".
If all of this-- strong frontman, collaborators, fewer samples-- sounds like Apar is more the product of a "real band," that's true and it's a double-edged sword. Even if you think that samples and piano riffs are cheap thrills, they're thrills nonetheless, and there are times during Apar that the group struggles to replace them. Late-album tracks like "Walk High" and "Your Face" are well constructed and tuneful, but their pedestrian arrangements don't nod heads like Subiza's hammy piano riffs. They, are, in other words, pretty tracks that don't require dance music's repetition or excess. And even given their more refined approach and darkened mood-- that breakup, plus Spain's destitute financial situation-- the band still sounds capable of projecting only blissed-out warmth. If Lopetegi's reedy voice was Subiza's limiting factor, the band's unchanging timbre may be Apar's.
So Apar is a modest change in direction, moving the band back towards their roots as indie rockers but retaining the lilt and grandness they developed on Ayrton Senna and Subiza. Apar finds both Lopetegi and his bandmates learning to finesse their songs, to put a little touch on their big, arcing pop. It falls flat sometimes, but it offers hope that there's more to Delorean's world than bigness, that those vast expanses they convey so easily won't become, paradoxically, a constraint. A broader palate is still under development, but Apar provides a path forward without forfeiting Delorean's effortless energy.