Delorean's "Real Love"

I really wanted to write something about Delorean without mentioning the beach, especially because here's my swimsuit. I can spend roughly 7 1/2 minutes in direct sunlight without bursting into flames. Still, here's this YouTube track of Delorean's "Real Love," replete with beautiful beach scene. Rest assured, though, you don't have to listen to this track -- or any of Delorean's other summer soaked jams -- exclusively on white sand in your board shorts (you're still wearing those?!). In fact, I often listen to "Real Love" in my bed or while driving in my automobile. That's sort of the beauty of the music -- it can transport you to sunshine land without the dubious benefits of Vitamin D or melanoma.

I've been on board with Delorean (their name is a car, I am Professor Metaphor!) since they dropped the consistently banging Ayrton Senna EP last year. That oh-so-brief record was comprised of 4 (5 if you bought it on iTunes) concise, clean, almost saccharine electro-pop wonders (the exception being John Talabot's extended remix of megajam "Seasun," which many people pumped through their iPod docks more often than the original, but which I found too ambling, too sprawling to keep up with the song's super-tight build-and-release). Suffice to say, I was waiting for Delorean's newest full-length LP to drop like I've been waiting to get into the club (I've never been allowed into the club, but their record, Subiza, came out a few weeks ago and I was allowed to purchase it).

Subiza is a dream of an album, but it's less concerned with the conventional pop structures of Ayrton Senna. Rather, we get to bliss out to gorgeous melodies without quite the emphasis on shaking our hips. That might sound like a knock, but it's not. Subiza's still an eminently danceable record, but it's more layered, more complex than the songs that first hooked me on the band.

Case in point: "Real Love". Opening with some typically ethereal loops and hazy samples, mixed with pitch-shifted vocals (cherubim, anyone?), the song takes its time getting going. Delorean's letting you soak up the atmosphere, like (errr) rays of -- yeah, you get it. When Ekhi Lopetegi's vocals finally hit (and, you know, his range isn't quite that far from those pitch-shifted "ah-oh's" that started us off) and the beat picks up, my brain gets seriously saturated with dopamine. I'm talking bliss like when I was a kid and the sno-cone guy pulled up outside of my house. Serious shit, folks. The chorus's question, "Will we ever meet again, / will we ever?" injects just the right dosage of nostalgia and longing into the mix. After all, I haven't seen that sno-cone guy in over a decade, and summers for me now are more about avoiding the heat, wishing I could drive away from work and straight to the ocean and my pastel-colored beach house with all of my friends from the last fifteen years. At least I can put on this record, roll the windows down, and feel like I'm a little closer to hitting the road.

--Corey