[By Liam Kitchen]
It’s difficult to put into words quite how big of a spectacle the all-action vaudeville of Tankus is. Six pieces of energetic rock n’ roll, with sprinklings of psychedelia, funk, and swinging New Orleans-style jazz. Tankus’ line-up includes your conventional rock setup of guitar, bass, and drums alongside a brass section; it’s as impressive as it sounds – and it needs to be to match the exuberance of main songwriter and frontman Jaz Delorean, who combines a bar-band boisterousness with his own style of beat poetry. As a whole, Tankus demonstrates a level of complexity and intention both musically and thematically that reveals their twenty years of near-constant touring and honing their craft.
Over these two decades, they’ve gained a reputation for being a relentless touring fixture across the UK and Europe, and 2026 is shaping up to be more of the same (including a date at PopRecs on 21st March) – but this time Tankus are touring (joined by Logan Metz) in support of their fourth album, Valley of Distraction. Representing a new evolution of the band as songwriters and performers, Valley of Distraction is a masterclass of merging styles and dynamics into one cohesive whole; never understated yet never overwhelming. Jaz Delorean was gracious enough to give me half an hour of his time as he currently treks through Europe on his own equally rigorous solo tour, where I was able to ask him about Tankus’ hectic schedule and the processes involved behind sculpting their new release.
“It’s a deliberately jarring sequence,” Jaz says of the album’s track listing, whilst en route to his next show in Saint-Nazaire, France. “So, I initially thought about it in two halves, partly because a lot of the fans buy it on vinyl – and also because I think of things like a theatre show, where you have an intermission.” That intentionality is present throughout the album, not allowing the audience to settle as it zigzags between rich, Police-esque pop on ‘Clapton Pond’ to the uneasy, jazzy stagger of the title track… and that’s just the first two songs! Valley of Distraction manages to tie all of these different directions together – jarring yes, but never disjointed.
“Each half has to have a flow, and feel like it’s telling some sort of story. We worked with Jim Sclavunos from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; he produced [the new album].” It’s interesting to consider two contrasting musical spheres colliding here, given Nick Cave’s typically minimalist arrangements compared to Tankus’ no-holds-barred approach. That being said, it works: “It was great to work with Jim, because he’s the storyteller. He’s worked with Nick for a long time, but he’s a great musician in his own right.”
Those storytelling instincts serve to focus Tankus’ volatility into a controlled chaos. “It was good to work out how to tell an emotional story; it was slightly abstract. One song will finish in one key, and then the next song might finish in a key that’s related to that – or it’ll be a similar groove, or it’ll be tailing down in dynamics.” And Delorean’s voice is the centre of the wheel; he tastefully meets each moment with just the right amount of intensity as it requires. Take the wild freeform ending to the aforementioned title track, or the much more subdued ‘That’s Something I Never Thought I’d Do.’
“’That’s Something I Never Thought I’d Do’ is a really tender and bittersweet love song – it has to be sung gently and close-mic’d; the piano lends itself to that really well. And then ‘Valley of Distraction’ gets really off-the-wall at the end; we’re really going for it. So, the end is semi-improvised and I’m just yelling into the mic, being strange.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Valley of Distraction is that, despite having so many moving parts, it was recorded mostly live. “The rest of the band is in the room tracking with me,” Jaz says, “that’s quite an old-fashioned way of doing it, but it’s a really human experience when you’re listening. It’s warts-and-all, really. There’s no autotune. It’s as real as it gets.” And this attitude reflects how they sound as a live band too; what you hear on this album is what you get with Tankus; “the whole point of recording like we did is because it’s a performance. This is the moment that we are recording this. If you feel like trying something, then it’s captured and you listen to it back and say: ‘oh let’s do it again!’ And everyone has to do it again. So, it’s quite challenging. It’s very exciting.”
You could argue that this sense of jeopardy is what makes Tankus such an enthralling experience – this ball of energy that threatens to supernova at every turn. I would argue that it is precisely the lack of jeopardy that gives them their appeal. It’s the spectacle of musicians completely in control of their craft, where – despite the power and complexity of the music – the audience can relax and trust the band to bring it home.
“We’re a community band; we tend to make friends with people where we play,” Jaz tells me. “I’d like [the audience] to leave thinking I just had a great time singing and playing live music with friends and strangers… and I didn’t see any mobile phones!” It’s an achievement that Tankus are able to make such an intense show so digestible, due to the fact that they aren’t afraid to lean into novelty in their songwriting – as seen in the penultimate track ‘Negroni Baloney.’
“We wrote that on our bass player’s stag do. We had loads of instruments set up and it was one of the stupid things that came out of that night,” Jaz reminisces, “a pretty wholesome stag do… but that’s all I’ll say about it.” The relaxed, communal disposition of the band absolutely makes Tankus a better show, as they seek to whip up a party atmosphere. “Our show is designed to have choruses that you can sing along to, even if you’ve never heard it before – which is a very healing thing to do. There is a silliness to Tankus, but there’s a profound depth to it as well. That’s what life is, you can have profundity and foolishness all in one day.”
Tankus’ mastery of the live performance has been a learned one after many, many shows. They’ve got approximately seventy shows scheduled for this year, including headline gigs and festival appearances. For Jaz, there’s a clear difference between the two: “When you’re on a festival stage, it can be a bit of a Best Of. The more hard-hitting stuff; ‘right, let’s get into it straight away.’”
“But in a venue like PopRecs, you’ve got more time to play with, which can be more dramatic. You can throw a ballad or two in there, which makes the non-ballad songs feel more theatrical as well.” Having such a dynamic show might seem tiring for the performers, particularly for a vocalist. “Singing a quiet song can be more difficult than singing a loud song if your voice is tired. I’ve done it for twenty years, so I’ve learned how to do it without losing my voice.”
There is the maturity, in both performance and professionalism, that has allowed Tankus to juggle writing an album like Valley of Distraction alongside such a busy touring schedule. For Jaz DeLorean, that looks like spending his rare free time as far away as possible from the spotlight. No, literally – the guy lives on a boat.
“I live very much in nature,” he says, “I just ride around in my canoe and play with my dogs. Yeah, it’s extreme. But I think that is what you need to do: something that is the antithesis of the other thing. It’s a good balance. Before, when I lived in London, I would just come back from touring and then just immediately go out. Because it’s all there and available, you can go out in a bar and jam on a piano until three in the morning. Then you go on tour again – you haven’t had any rest at all.”
“I think that comes with getting a bit older,” which leads me to my final question: do you think you could have made this new album ten, fifteen years ago?
“No, I don’t. It’s a very current, relevant album to me. I think there’s some poetry in it that I’m really proud of. There are moments of life that are written into it – and I hope that it’s relevant to the listener as well.” For me, it certainly is. It’s also clear that Tankus appears to have mellowed into being the full package – a band so used to going full throttle, comfortable with taking their foot off the gas, even if only slightly.