If long-term memory is nothing more than selective editing, and only pop's most weighty, visceral works are built to last, then it's quite possible that in 50 years the Britpop era will be best recollected for the two bands it ostracised. Earlier this year, we met Liverpool's Shack and thought their tragic story of fire, drugs, mercurial brilliance and corporate incompetence indicated the biggest music biz oversight of the 90s. We were wrong, because we hadn't met Birmingham's Delta yet.

Laughing Mostly is richer and more engrossing than anything by Shack. It's the last great album of the millennium - until you peruse the sleevenotes and find out it was written in the mid-90s, and recorded at various points over the last three years, as Delta (formerly late-80s janglers The Sea Urchins) battled to untether themselves from an agreement with Acid Jazz that left them in an infuriating state of dormancy, unable to release an album, but still under contract.

But don't let that put you off. Laughing Mostly is one of those illusory mixed-bags that, despite pulling its material from different climates, succeeds in being more coherent than most concept LPs. It's clear that life was just as bad when Delta's sibling songwriters James and Patrick Roberts recorded Low Flying in 1994 as when they recorded Mean Time in March 1998. The date might change, but the obsessions - lack of dosh, fickle females, turn-of-the-70s West Coast pop - don't.

Strutting and sulking between the psychedelic peaks of Spirit's Farther Along, Neil Young's eponymous debut album and Moby Grape's Wow, this is music which accepts that its ingredients are second-hand, but realises that a good record collection is often the best way to express a new emotion. You can hear Delta's collective imagination working overtime, imagining that it's Jimi Hendrix jamming with Spacemen 3 or The Byrds fronted by Randy California, but, finally, the result is always a song that, in its unique way, tells the listener that convincing yourself you feel bad is the best way to feeling good again.

Delta's playing is so in tune with their moods, it's as if they have special settings on their guitars that say "Desperation", "Difficult Girlfriend" and "Valour". The track sequencing is brilliant, with its tendency to offset a piece of crippling emotional honesty with an avalanche of psychedelic wig-out. Laughing Mostly reaches its peak with the devastating Silly World, where the moan of "silly world" (changed on the fade-out to "silly girl") is so swallowed by loss that it says more in two words than most singers could in 50.