All You Need Is Hate. The Delgados. 2003. Mantra Recordings.

 When Scotland’s the Delgados released their fourth LP, Hate, in the States, January, 2003, American politics were in the grip of Republican strategist Karl Rove’s enactment of his bigoted vision of a country divided along party and ideological lines. 9-11 was still a fresh wound, and the additional horrors of the Bush administration’s Iraq invasion and the Global War on Terror were only months away. The lies justifying both wars were occupying so much media airtime and print space that we all lived in a palpable, stultifying mood of inevitable dread. What was ultimately so maddening about that time—which has extended into today—was how grossly indifferent the GOP was to the effects of its falsehoods on anyone who was paying attention. One side internalized the hate of political propagation because of our helplessness to do anything about it, while the other side wanted the volume on deception turned all the way up because it inflamed their wildly egregious biases. All You Need Is Hate illuminates life in a time of hatred, how we grow comfortable with it and the relative ease with which we attempt to normalize it. Charged with irony, the song satirizes the ill fortunes of our modern life the way Kinks records used to: by locating the sadness at the heart of who we are then reframing it in bravura, transformative pop melodies that bewitch us if not with joy then with a sublime sense of self-recognition. The struggle to endure the madness of hatred amidst headaches and sleepless nights, mass shootings and grotesque fallout from the opioid crisis, also brings the occasional, illusive, wondrous breeze of shared respite. 

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