By Eleni P. Austin
Way back at the turn of the 21st century, the Coen Brothers wrote and directed a movie called “O’ Brother, Where Art There.” A depression era comedy that referenced Homer’s “Odyssey,” it was a critical and commercial success, but the real star of the film was the soundtrack.
Produced by T-Bone Burnett, it featured a plethora of period specific Folk, Blues, Country, Gospel Western Swing and Bluegrass. Remarkably, the album shot up the charts, winning three Grammies, and ultimately selling 7.9 million copies. It also seemed to give tacit permission to hipsters to explore their rural roots.
Suddenly, Starbucks denizens were waxing rhapsodic about Ralph Stanley and the Louvin Brothers. Electric guitars were out and the banjo and mandolin were in. The result was a surfeit beards and bolo ties huddling around the mic, plucking away on their autoharps.
Of course, some excellent bands managed to push past the trend, (like Old Crow Medicine Show and Avett Brothers). But it also opened the door to musical opportunists who got the details right, but missed the point. (Think Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers).
One band that gets the point is Darlingside. The band members met at Williams College. Initially, Auyon Mukharji and David Senft shared a dorm room, forming a fraternal bond. The pair joined a school singing group, the Williams Octet, and two years later Don Mitchell and Harris Paseltiner also signed on. The four students connected, sharing a passion for songwriting, choral music and street busking.
Once they had all graduated, they moved into a house together on the Connecticut River, in the tiny town of Hadley, Massachusetts. With Dave on bass, Auyon playing classical violin and mandolin, Don tackling guitar and banjo and Harris providing guitar and cello they began woodshedding in earnest. Drummer Sam Kapala completed their line-up.
They took their name from a college professor who urged his students to “kill your darlings.” This was a phrase attributed to the writer William Faulkner, who said “in writing you must kill your darlings.” Initially, the band was “Darlingcide,” like fratricide or matricide, but that seemed too bloodthirsty, so they settled on a more friendly spelling.
Darlingside released a self-titled six song EP in 2010, and followed up two years later with their first full-length, Pilot Machines. When Sam Kapala decided to move on rather than recruit another drummer, they recalibrated their style, dubbing their new sound “String Rock.”
Birds Say is their second long-player and their first as a quartet. The album opens with “The Ancestor.” The track slowly builds, starting with a percolating rhythm, thrumming acoustic guitar and tart mandolin fills. The lyrics sketch out a Sci-Fi scenario that features a crimson yellow sun and assorted nebulas.
The band’s quirky humor, reverence of Pop Culture and love of cryptic wordplay is a big part of their charm. Three tracks, “White Horses,” “Harrison Ford” and “Go Back,” highlight those traits.
Banjo and guitar pluck out circuitous notes under hushed and honeyed four-part harmonies on “White Horses.” The rhythm accelerates to a galloping gait accommodating this intersection of childhood memories; “Sitting on the ledge outside the second floor, we could hear the sirens running running up the road,” and vivid dreamscapes; “I’m swimming in my dreams across the lake in second place, come the winter I’m driving blind, a tuxedo doing doughnuts on the ice.”
“Harrison Ford” offers a more linear sequence of events, even though it still feels like a fever dream. Clattering percussion collides head long with skittering banjo runs. Conversely, their signature harmonies are lush and unhurried.
The lyrics recount an eccentric job interview with a man who looks like Harrison Ford. “He doesn’t say a thing, just nods and pulls out a sword/I match him blow-for-blow, counter-parry and dodge, but as the battle wears on we’re getting along/He knocks the sword from my hand and says ‘congratulations you’ve got the job.’”
“Go Back” is an explicit homage to “Back To The Future.” A celestial acapella chorus gives way to a sugar rush of acoustic filigrees and banjo accents. Referencing Doc Brown, the eccentric inventor of the Flux Capacitor, they concede, “I know, I’m no doctor, but I know you can’t live in the past/But the only way is to go back and return to who we were.”
The best songs here are less interested in straightforward narratives than exploring different sonic landscapes. The title track is powered by off-kilter handclaps, as meandering electric guitar licks dart and pivot through a thicket of bass, cello and violin. The lyrics are playful and almost come from a child’s point of view. “Don’t know what the birds say, listen to them all day nothing sounds like words/Don’t know if the colors look the same to you, you see white the way that I see blue.”
“My Gal, My Guy,” is probably the first Samba in history to be anchored by mandolin and banjo. A hyperactive ode to love, the lyrics flit like a Hummingbird, rarely landing on a cogent point, but who fucking cares? The vocals shimmer and dance, a lengthy instrumental break is flavored with piquant guitar, rippling mandolin runs and tensile banjo notes. The whole song walks a tightrope between yearning and celebration.
On “Do You Ever Live,” Darlingside comes across as a land-locked Beach Boys. Rather than pine for sand, surf and girls, they wrap their beatific blend around a nautical metaphor for mental health; “Are you adrift, are your hands at ten and two/Are you the spinning wheel as it starts to reel?” The angst is underscored by fluttery keys, bowed cello strings and a yawning electric guitar solo
The album’s centerpiece is “God Of Loss.” The sawing fiddle that calibrates the action feels vaguely elegiac, conjuring up funeral scenes in films like “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “Get Low.” The tune shares some musical DNA with the Williams Brothers’ (“Moonriver crooner Andy Williams’ Everly-esque twin nephews), early ‘90s gem, “I Give It Up For you.”
But the lyrics aren’t mourning for a lost life, more like the loss of a way of life, as a son gives up family traditions to pledge fealty to his new bride. “Yes, we will leave here without a trace, take a new name and a new shape/I’ll be no outlaw no renegade, just your faithful god of loss.”
Another standout is the achingly beautiful “Clay & Cast Iron.” The lyrics feel like a laundry list of well, things, (leather purses, sunglasses, perfume and fig trees). But closer examination reveals each item is a sad talisman that trigger moments of sadness and regret. Once again, the painterly instrumentation serves as a backdrop for the band’s exquisite harmonies.
Other interesting tracks include the acapella haiku of “Water Rose,” and the wintry “She’s All Around.” “Volcano Sky” is equal parts somber and weird, filtering a science versus faith argument through skronky, reverb drenched guitar chords and tinkly piano.
The album closes with “Good For You.” Spidery mandolin riffs connect with oscillating banjo notes. Here the harmonies seem particularly ecclesiastic, wondering what the future holds. “Oh I was happiness and I was sorrow…and what will I become tomorrow?”
Musically speaking, this band puts their money where their mouth is, (literally.) Every note created in the studio is easily replicated on stage, the foursome gather round and throw their heads back like the Peanuts gang belting out “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing.” Their vocal alchemy feels both eternal and ephemeral.
In the era of auto-tuning, vocal processing and studio trickery, Darlingside is a welcome blast from the past. And none of them sport bolo ties.
