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And we have our first contestant. Dave Weil hands us his preview, preliminary, initial, might-change-my-mind-later thoughs on The Delivery Man:

First of all, I've only heard it once.

My biggest problem with it is what I was a little worried about when I read the tracklisting and that's "Where's 'The Delivery Man' "? The conceit is just swallowed up. It doesn't even come across as anything if you don't know that it was supposed to be a full-fledged project at one point. Sure, if you listen closely, a couple of the songs name-check the women. But as far as a story, it just isn't there.
Guess he just gave up on it, but it sure had a promising plot potential.

Button My Lip is an odd choice for an opener. It's not unprecedented to have a one-chord rant (B&C anyone?). It almost strikes me as overcompensating for the fact that he's married to Diana Krall (yes, I'm over-psychoanalyzing this but I can't help it). It's noisy, jarring and neat in a way, and I like all of the odd SN piano jabs.
But I can't help but wish it were over at the 3 minute point. I *do* like the cheesy spring-loaded echo effect on his voice at the end.

Then we seque into the song that I was underwhelmed with when I first heard it, Country Darkness. It's not bad, but it's a bit of a retread.
And Pete's cymbals sound like pie plates.

Now there's the rave-up, There's a Story in Your Voice, which starts promisngly, but it seems weird to have Lucinda to come barrelling into the song, and, as much as I like her, her delivery is just weird, especially for the song. Chris was right when he called it snarling (or whatever it was he said). The harmonies were cool though. And then we get a Rebel Yell at the end. I guess that this was to underscore that this is a "southern album".

The Either Side of the Same Town is good and pretty close to the way that he's been doing it live. And we get a couple of brief falsettos from EC, which is brilliant (although I would have liked it better if he had sung the phrase normally first, then slipped the falsetto in as contrast). The drums still have that brittle sound that's starting to annoy me a little. Having said that, I realize that Nick Lowe could screw the drum up sometimes as well. You really hear the raggedness of his voice that we heard in Oxford. It's pretty cool.

Now we come to Bedlam. Its fits and starts sort of mirror the album up to this point. I like the song but up to this point, the album just hasn't grabbed me. And where's the Delivery Man?

Oh, here it is. It seems to drag a little. Its tempo is somewhere between the slow and fast versions we heard and it just seems too lean and sparse-sounding, at least until the bridge. It also seems weird to have all of the namechecking if there's not going to be a whole project about these people. Well, at least we're going to get a continuation of the story, right?

Oh wait, now it's Monkey To Man. Guess I was wrong. And frankly, the recording messed up the call-and-response. I thought Davey should have been beefed up a little bit. Also, it's weird that they leave out the "Yardbirds" riff at the beginning and then stick it in almost randomly right before the chorus.

Hey, I didn't know that they were going to cover Imagine. Oh wait, it's Ivy. My mistake. Frankly, they've sucked the quiet power out of the song by making it pretty much bass and keyboards. It sounds too precious, as compared to the versions that we heard. It's reminicent of Party Girl but doesn't have the intensity, and drags a little. I like the harmony vocals from Emmylou but they're nothing all that special.

The closest to what we heard in "rehearsal" is TNOTTINL (sorry, but I'm feeling lazy this morning). Roughly the same tempo and arrangement. I like it a lot. I'd have liked it a lot better if he had yelled, "Take it Steve!" The hollow sound of the drums works for this song.

I like Heart Shaped Bruise, although I still liked it better as an acoustic guitar based song. I think it's far better than Country Darkness. And Emmylou! This works better than Ivy. Also, her solo verse works better in this context for me than Lucinda's solo works (it's sort of that classic "he said/she said/two sides of the same coin" country concept). The pedal steel is nice. I wish they had played up the Party Girl style ending that we heard live.

Now for a little Needle Time. I can't help but think that the title is a double-entendre poke at Cait (my imagery was more druggie when I heard it live). I like the counted intro and the sound of this really works for the song. I'm still up in the air about the slowed chorus but I tend to like it. There's a nice little wank going into the second verse, and those of you who were worried about wanking on the album don't have a lot to fear. LOVE SN's keyboards. I like the hard ending.

Hey, Circus Music! Neat way to open The Judgment. Now *this* has a "sound" that they should have used for Ivy. Big, wet, and juicy.
There's a real sense of drama in the sound. It's a cleaner version of what we heard live. Mabye this is the answer song (or apology song) to the previous song. This should have been the end of the album.

Still, The Scarlet Tide is a nice coda. For some reason, I keep hearing a fiddle that just ins't there. and the word "mechanism" needs to go away...

Well, now I've heard it twice. Some of my criticisms are the kind that would get on Costello's last nerve, the main one being, "Hey, now's your chance to engage a whole new set of people and you're just going to piss them off". I know that he wants to make music as he sees fit and if people come along, well then, that's cool. Still, seems to me that you could have just come up with this track order by randomly drawing names out of a hat. It's not even close to having the flow and pace that the live shows had (and maybe I'm prejudiced because of this). Also, why screw up his time-honored tradition of album titles by using The Delivery Man? Oh, I get it, it's a variation of that "unexpected" thing - we'll give you a concept album that *isn't* a concept album. I really do think that he's overcompensating by trying to be more "difficult" than he had to be.

I'm a little disappointed with Dennis Herring's production. He didn't blow it or anything, but I think that there were some odd production choices (which might have been EC's, who knows?) Some things he really hit on the head, and others he missed by a considerable margin, at least to me.

I find it odd that I think of this as WIWC pt. 2.

Well, there ya have it. My ramblings. It's not bad at all, just not the cohesive whole that stamps his best works. I give it a B/B+. It will definitely be an album that I skip around on.