The Delgados

With the likes of the Beastie Boys, R.E.M. and John Mellencamp putting ham-fisted anti-war songs online, the search is on for an antidote to humorless, tuneless protests. The front-runner turns out to be “All You Need Is Hate,” a gloriously subversive anthem the Scottish quartet the Delgados (pictured) released overseas last year and here this spring on its brilliant fourth album, Hate. A delicate, music-box opening gives way to an insidiously catchy chorus (in a jingoistic major key) that could run under a montage of clips from overeager networks and their “embedded” reporters. Yet despite the Dr. Strangelove-at-the-U.N. quality of Bush-ready lyrics like I believe it’s better to inflict than to attempt relief, the song predates talk of war and applies to interpersonal and international nemeses with equal satiric weight. It’s not the last thing you’d expect from a group best known for symphonic-rock pastorals, but it represents a greater depth of focus and a stronger wit than the songs on 2000’s The Great Eastern. On that excellent album, the Delgados mastered sweep and grandeur; on Hate (produced, like Eastern, by Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev whiz Dave Fridmann), the group applies an absolute command of melody to its windswept sonics and scores a masterpiece. Also from Scotland and also following up a respected 2000 album, Aerogramme occasionally breaks from its neo-Nirvana push-me-pull-you attack to settle into a hypnotic groove or on a Highlands moor. The band’s 2003 Sleep and Release wouldn’t sound out of place on the Delgados’ homegrown Chemikal Underground label alongside Mogwai and Arab Strap; it sometimes betters those groups and suggests a future of Delgados-like promise.