DELIVERY

Writer: Keeley Thompson

Images: Oscar O'Shea, Eve Wickson, Marcelle Bradbeer

Credit: Oscar O'Shea

Our sharehouse works the way a badly taped remote works: not gracefully, but with conviction and ragged efficiency. On blistering days, furniture migrates toward the only fans in the house, and the coffee table makes way for mattress. Beers perpetually rotate from carton to freezer to hand. Empty bottles are initially kept as future homes for stolen pub plants but eventually traded in for 10c to save on household expenses, but mostly just toilet paper. There’s a “crap drawer” in the kitchen that barely shuts, an allsort of unopened mail, loose batteries and anything uncategorisable that you might need at some time some day. None of it makes sense on paper, but it keeps us awake.

After nine-to-five days that flatten colour into grey, this kind of disorder is both the jolt and circuit breaker of the system.

Delivery provides a similar zap.

Their music thrives on momentum. Their discography is all serrated edges, angles and level-headed articulation, but for every brawny punch is an athletic swing to follow. Delivery balances everything, but not in a corporate management way and more in a precarious, hands-off-the-handlebars way, where motion replaces mathematics and things hold together because they’re moving fast enough.

Jagged corners are softened by flashes of warmth; deadpan detachment is tackled aside by something crooked and unmistakably human. Their songs are always moving, pushed forward with a drive that refuses to let you settle. Delivery is comprised of Bec Allan, Liam Kenny, James Lynch, Scarlett Maloney, Jordan Oakley. Together, they are a garage-new-wave-egg-post-punk delight to be enjoyed in excessive entirety, and then some. 

KEELEY: Hey! How are you both?

JAMES: Good.

BEC: We've just been stuck on the computer doing random admin crap, which is not very rock and roll.

JAMES: We start recording a new album soon and then we record up to the next tour. So there's no more downtime to finish all the boring admin stuff so we've been doing our accounting.

KEELEY: New album hey? Can you tell me a bit about it  (if you’re allowed to)?

JAMES: Yeah we can probably tell you a bit about it!

We're starting to record it tomorrow, so I guess there's lots left to be found out about what it's going to sound like.

It feels like a development of the first two records, but also, I guess it still feels like a Delivery album. This is the first one we will be making with the current members of the band so it's been a fun experience, kind of understanding how everyone operates and each other's strengths.

In true Delivery style everyone who is in the band now has been contributing songs so there's still a bunch of different vocalists, even though members have changed. I'm excited for people to hear it, but it might be a little while.

KEELEY: What is the music or song creation process like for you? Do you go in with a plan or is it more of a “fuck around and find out” kind of thing?

BEC: Definitely more of a planned band. We're big on demos, so when everyone writes songs, they make a demo of how it sounds (at the time). Sometimes we do that all together, sometimes separately. 

But yeah, we have demos of how most of the songs should go by the time we're going in to record them.

JAMES: This is the first time we're recording at a proper studio with other people involved, we've got someone involved being a producer, which is exciting.

Credit: Oscar O'Shea

KEELEY: It was recently the three year anniversary of “Forever Giving Handshakes”. How does it feel?

BEC: Pretty good, really. It was quite funny on Saturday night we were at a pub, just having a beer after band practice and ‘Picture This’ came on over the speakers, which is the first song on that album. I was like, damn, this song is actually sick.

I guess it's maybe one of those things where it's been so long that you can look back and appreciate it.

JAMES: I think from the get-go we were always pretty proud of the album and it definitely was made with no pressure but also no real preconceived idea of what it might be. We'd only just come out of lockdown and the band had been in existence for about a year at that time, but we'd only played a handful of gigs, but then we kept going back into lockdown. I think everyone was just really excited to be playing the songs together, which is probably what I look back on mostly from that.

I mean I haven’t listened to it properly in a while and I probably should have listened to it when we had the anniversary.

KEELEY: You mentioned that you started during COVID lockdowns, obviously there were challenges from that, but were there any kind of hidden benefits?

BEC: We were actually incredibly lucky during quite a dire time. The band even starting during lockdown was the main benefit. The lockdown itself was great because we were so bored that we just suddenly decided to write music together, and I guess we  just had way more time.

We're really lucky that James can do home recordings so we could get a lot of song ideas together and have versions of them.

JAMES: I think when lots of bands had to really put on the brakes, we were fortunate that the band was two of my housemates, and then Beck and her housemates. But also because Beck and I are partners, we could go to each other's houses.

KEELEY: Moving on from COVID, what are your highlights of 2025 thus far?

BEC:  Oh my god. It feels like this year has just been insane. Putting Force Majeure out. Green Man in Wales.

JAMES: Well we went overseas twice. 

BEC: Oh my god, South by Southwest in Austin! That was actually awesome. We played 12 shows in four days, which is psycho, but so Delivery.

JAMES: One day we played four shows in a day, which was a life highlight.

BEC: The first one was at 9am.

JAMES: I’d say our Melbourne album launch as well. That was at The Tote, which is a legendary venue in Melbourne and it was a packed fun show with heaps of friends there.

BEC: Yeah, this year's been the biggest so far. 

Credit: Marcelle Bradbeer

KEELEY: Has touring taught you anything or any lesson that you didn't already know?

BEC: I think you always learn more things every tour that you do. I think also the more touring that we've done, the more you just become a touring machine where you're ready for anything and can deal with anything that happens.

JAMES: There's so many lessons that we've learned on tour and the things you can only  learn from doing it. There were definitely things at the start that I’d thought “why didn't anyone tell me I should think about this”.

My favourite thing I try and do, or perhaps remember on tour, is that you’ve got to enjoy the bits that are crap so you can enjoy the good stuff. You got to think of it all as one all-encompassing thing.

If you can convince yourself that all the parts of it are great, then I think you'll have more sustainability doing it for longer.

BEC: It’s not really a lesson, but I definitely know the importance of having good bandmates. Also don't expect that you're going to be able to exercise and be healthy. And take probiotics.

KEELEY: I saw you have footy shorts as merch – are you fans of footy?

BEC: The band gets into footy, but we're not footy fanatics.

JAMES: There'd be varying degrees of fanaticism. I think it's maybe more so than being footy fans, I think footy attire has a strong presence within the band. Liam, who plays the drums, had a couple of pairs that he would wear when he drummed. So that's kind of what led to the idea.

KEELEY: Your lyricism can feel quite abstract  upon first listen, with the meaning kind of hitting you (or at least me) later. Do you do that on purpose or do you also only realise the meaning once you’ve written the songs?

JAMES: Probably a combination of both, I think. I don't know if we ever really discussed it at the beginning of the band, but I think from the get-go we all individually tried pretty hard to write good lyrics. Sometimes you find meaning a bit afterwards, but I think most of the time we went in with intention. But also, there's things you may want to say, but for me at least, I am not very good at saying them directly.

BEC: I’m the same, if you say it too directly it can feel quite cringe so I try and reword things to make it not so obvious.

JAMES: I think we're quite good at obscuring.

BEC: Sometimes you just come up with some lines in your head or something that you think sound cool and then you build a story from a line or a phrase that had no real meaning, but it could mean something, and then it just goes on a journey. 

KEELEY: What and who are your favourite bands?

JAMES: Oh good question. I mean there's so many bands I have been listening to at the moment. We're very lucky in Melbourne because a lot of our favourite bands are our friends.

BEC: We saw Way Dynamic on Friday night, that's one of my favourite albums. 

JAMES: I grew up as a massive garage rock guy, so I love Ty Segall and Parquet Courts. Also Eddie Current and UV Race.

BEC: Yeah, Eddie Current and UV Race would be big on the list for me.

JAMES: There's a band from Seattle called The Intelligence we were really inspired by in the beginning of Delivery. 

BEC: Franz Ferdinand and AC/DC are some childhood favourites too. 

Credit: Eve Wickson

KEELEY:  You get a lot of praise online, do you ever feel pressure because of that or do you find it doesn’t really impact your process?

BEC: Not really.

JAMES:  Well, I mean I think any praise we get online, we're the kind of people that don't take that seriously.

BEC: Or it's equally undermined by the next person that says “this is average, wouldn't listen again”.

JAMES: We're the kind of people that are really intrigued to read the reviews, but whether it's positive or negative, you kind of just ignore it either way.

But this is probably the first time where I’ve felt a bit of pressure. With the last album, a few people would ask if we felt any pressure making the second album, which we didn’t because I think it was more exciting to show people what we can do. 

Now we've shown people that there's more pressure on the one we're about to start making, which I'm feeling really good about. Also though, it’s mostly just pressure from yourself to try and one-up yourself.

KEELEY:  What is your favourite song from your discography?

BEC: I actually think my favourite song is from Forever Giving Handshakes and it's ‘Born Second’ because it's just so unlike something that I thought we would write and I love listening to it.

To play live I was going to say a song that we're about to record, but that's not technically in the discography currently, so maybe my favourite song to play live would be ‘Digging the Hole’. 

JAMES: I don't know what my answer is. There's a bunch of new ones that we've been playing live that are really fun and I think when we finish it [the new album], it will be really cool. But I guess it probably changes all the time.

We started playing Floored, which is from the first EP again for the first time in ages, so it's always fun listening back to the real early stuff, I guess.

KEELEY: What is the best thing you've ever had delivered or wish you could get delivered?

JAMES: I have an answer to this. In lockdown, I got my PlayStation 2 back out. When I was a kid, we had a PS2 and I had this game called Ty the Tasmanian Tige. It’s set in the Australian outback, but it was totally made by Americans or something, so it's extremely goofy and cliched.

Anyway, I got it out of my parents house and then in lockdown when I got to the final level, the disc had obviously been scratched and it kept glitching. I was kind of disappointed because I was so close to finishing the game, so I went online and found this secondhand copy of the same game.

I got that delivered, and then I completed the game.

BEC: I don't feel I've ever had anything that awesome delivered. But I don't know, my favourite thing to get delivered is pizza after a night out.

KEELEY: I wanted to ask you what your coffee order is in honour of ‘Operating At A Loss’.

JAMES: Cold or hot - like in the song

I'll get an oat latte, but I genuinely will get it cold or hot, pending mood.

BEC:  Well, because we have a coffee machine at home, I'll either have a long black or an oat latte. So when we go out, I like to get a yummy treat and I get an iced matcha with oat milk.

JAMES: Can I do a special shout out to Seamus, one of Delivery's original guitarists.

When the band had just started we'd just finished another COVID lockdown and everyone came over to my house to finish recording a song.

JAMES: Seamus messaged us saying, “hey, anyone want a coffee, I'm going past the cafe” and everyone's said, “yeah, that'd be sick” and then he didn't say anything and kind of went offline without asking what we wanted. Anyway, he rocked up with four full cream cappuccinos.

BEC: It was iconic but also couldn’t be further from what our usual orders are - we all drink oat or non-dairy milk 

KEELEY What's on the Delivery horizon? Any final words?

BEC: It feels like this recording and touring is the end of a crazy, ginormous year. It feels like every time I see someone they're asking me, “are you on tour or just got back from tour or about to go for tour?”

And now we kind of have a tiny break for the first time. I'm excited to start thinking of all the creative stuff and less about logistical stuff. 

JAMES: We've actually got no major plans for the first time in a while. We can just focus on recording, and that’s really exciting. But, based on that we can kind of guess that we’ll  probably be releasing an album at some point and going back on tour at some point. It’s kind of the calm between two storms. 

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