Delivery

The keyboard pulse that opens Measuring Cup might as well have come from a 1970s monosynth – some ancient, dusty second-hand object like a Wasp. For a few seconds, it forces out a repetitive tone that feels like it’s about to lift everything off the ground. As the song properly starts, bass and synths fleck around a precision rhythm track, followed by a petulant vocal – somehow both disaffected and alluring at once – that asks a list of questions that burrow into the heart of it all.

Hey yeah, I’m talking to you

Do you ever think about the things that you do?

Do you ever wonder why you hit the dead end?

Do you ever want to look a little deeper inside?

By the time the chorus arrives, the whole thing sounds like a party kicking off in the recording studio. Guitars fly through, and the voice finally invites the listener to get onside.

It’s the measuring cup

Put in the elixir and drink it up

Go on, drain the cup

If you’ve got the guts

That monosynth is still in there somewhere, hard to hear now as everything has lifted off the ground. As album openers go, Delivery’s Measuring Cup is brimming over – a punk-rock punch that’s ready to intoxicate anyone who’s got the guts to drain that cup. This is how Zone 3 – the third album by Delivery – begins.

Bec Allan (bass, vocals): After the last album (Force Majeure) we were really keen to keep the band’s momentum going. I think we’re always a bit restless if we’re not working on something new. Zone 3 definitely comes off the back of a lot more touring, of us being on the road and having lots of late nights, really becoming a proper unit as a band. We were spending so much time together, doing everything together, and I think we were drawing inspiration from those environments rather than from where the band originally started.

Force Majeure was a rock’n’roll record inspired by finally getting out of Melbourne’s endless Covid lockdown at the start of the decade. That album took recordings by the band’s Bec Allan and James Lynch – a couple who’d previously been part of the city’s punk and garage-rock scenes respectively – and added friends and musicians to create an album that Rolling Stone magazine would later call ‘a statement of intent’. Zone 3 was different from the start – a new band to play with, and exceptional new noises to make. 

James Lynch (guitars, synths, vocals): The last record was an extension of what the band had become after starting as a lockdown project. This time, it felt like it was time to make something more – not more considered, because the other records were considered too – but more holistic. We weren’t trying to write our “greatest hits”; we were thinking about how to make a forty-minute record that felt like one complete piece. We also applied some ground rules that set the tone from the outset. The main idea for us was that this was going to be our late-night record.

Bec: We’d played around with synthesisers and drum machines on the earlier records, but this time we really leaned into those elements – more synths, more drum machines, more rigid, groove-orientated ideas. Although the starting point was this idea of a late-night album, everyone in the band interpreted that idea slightly differently. To me, it was about making a record you could put on at a party late at night.

If Covid’s long shadow hung over Force Majeure (the all-engulfing claustrophobia of Operating At A Loss, the heavy repetition of Digging The Hole), Zone 3 fully embraces the sounds of the city just as the streetlights begin to burn at their brightest, as Bec and James – along with Scarlett Maloney (guitar, vocals), Jordan Oakley (guitar) and Liam Kenny (drums, vocals) – flip the switch and illuminate everything around them.

Within that glow, New Routine becomes an inescapable invite across a crowded bar, No Impact brings the kind of punk groove that will flood the dancefloor when the DJ decides it’s time to get people out of their seats, and Zone 2 is a punchy 2am clatter through the back corridors of a club, percussion and vocals spinning just above your head. It’s a dizzying collection that feels like it’s fallen deeply in love with nocturnal life and all the wonders that brings with it.

James: Even though there are touchstones that inspired the record, the influences were less specific this time. It was more about capturing a similar feeling to what certain acts do when they make records, rather than writing songs inspired by them. For example, LCD Soundsystem are naturally a late-night dancefloor kind of band, but we weren’t trying to write songs that sounded like LCD Soundsystem. We were more trying to chase the same effect that a band like that can have.

Bec: If the energy of our previous albums was more like nine or ten o’clock at night, this one is definitely more of a one-to-three-in-the-morning record.

James: Although it should be said that was really just the starting point. You aim at something, but you don’t necessarily hit it exactly – you end up somewhere nearby that’s sometimes even more interesting. I don’t think this is exactly the record we imagined at the beginning, but we had a lot of fun getting to where it ended up.

From Ways Of Living’s Wire-tangled vocals to The Rot’s PiL-in-dub-mode skank and Monies’ NYC guitar-driven proto-disco stomp, Zone 3 embraces post-punk sounds and filters them through Melbourne’s streets and clubs. The effect is dizzying, creating an addictive and unique trip into the heart of the night that is uniquely Delivery’s.

Bec: When you start out, you naturally bring things with you from other projects, or from records you’ve been listening to, from the scene you’re part of and the bands you’re seeing all the time. The longer we’ve been in Delivery, the more confident we’ve become in trying things because we want to, rather than because we think we should or because we think it’s the cool thing to do. You trust your own instincts a bit more. There are things on this record that we might have been a bit afraid to touch before, but then you think, “You know what? We can do this. Let’s give it a crack.”

James: We were more influenced by being in Delivery than by any particular bands. The goal was to make a Delivery record that sounded like this, rather than a record that sounded like somebody else. There are still little moments where we’d say, “What if we did our version of this?” In the past, that might’ve been us nodding to a garage or punk band, but this time it became, “This band sounds nothing like us – what if we tried to write a song in the style of them?”

Trying to recreate Zone 3’s perfect after-dark sounds saw the band head to York Street Studios in Melbourne’s Fitzroy North to work with the inspirational combo of producer Dan Luscombe (previously worked with Amyl and the Sniffers, Floodlights, Courtney Barnett) and engineer Stefan Blair (who operates out of the studio, and notably recorded Way Dynamic’s ‘Massive Shoe’ there recently).

James: Dan plays in The Drones, a legendary Australian band that I think all of us discovered at different points growing up. We knew Dan from around the Melbourne scene. From the Drones and a bunch of the other acts he’s worked with, he has some pretty mega rock ’n’ roll credentials, and he and Bec would sometimes find themselves talking late at night about making a proper rock ’n’ roll record.

Bec: Those conversations would be happening at about one in the morning, at spots like (local venue) The Curtin. But it was quite funny in reality when we were making this album because we’d been saying “let’s make this rock ’n’ roll record” and then we’d be listening back and realise we’d made… this.

Recorded in just twelve days, Zone 3 is the point where Delivery the idea – locked down, pissed off – becomes Delivery the band – laser-focused, fully determined, properly inviting even if it’s the middle of the night. Talking of which, where does that leave Delivery now, and the idea of a fourth album coming somewhere in the future?

James: That’s a good question. One of my favourite things about this record is something somebody pointed out afterwards. They said the last song (Styles Start) feels like the sun is finally coming up. Maybe there’s something there…

Evening gigs, darkened rooms in the middle of the night, and frazzled sunrises: Delivery have got you covered, whatever time you’re listening.