AEM121 Darlingside

Five beau­ti­ful voices backed by three gui­tars and the con­ven­tional bass and drums. Backed some­what less-conventionally by vio­lin, cello, and man­dolin. Fur­ther sup­ported by the thor­oughly obscure pen­ny­whis­tle and saz. Five guys. Five unique musi­cal per­sonas. One aes­thetic, aston­ish­ingly more con­gru­ent than the sum of its parts.

I’m talk­ing about Dar­ling­side, a self-dubbed “string rock” out­fit based out of Northamp­ton, MA. String rock is an apt term since, for a band with three gui­tarists, gui­tar plays a sur­pris­ingly min­i­mal role in Darlingside’s sound, tak­ing a back­seat to rich string arrange­ments. Bass too keeps mostly clear of the lime­light, with low fre­quen­cies dom­i­nated by cello. Vocals also dom­i­nate, often in the form of lush five-part har­monies, and drums are the final major ingre­di­ent in the Dar­ling­side aes­thetic, com­mand­ing in both vol­ume and inten­sity and per­pet­u­ally diverg­ing from the expected course. The song­writ­ing care­fully bal­ances sat­is­fy­ing refrains with a pen­chant for explo­ration and, while some­what heavy handed, is refresh­ingly self assured in that. Although they’ve been together for only a year, they’ve bro­ken out of their hometown’s ven­er­a­ble but student-centric music scene and have the toured east coast heav­ily, from Port­land, ME to D.C.

The band chalks its eclec­tic sound up to an “unlikely hodge-podge” of musi­cal back­grounds, which mer­its some expla­na­tion. Har­ris Paseltiner (cello, gui­tar) is an accom­plished clas­si­cal cel­list who has appeared twice on NPR. Auyon Mukharji (vio­lin, man­dolin, saz) trav­eled to Brazil, Ire­land, and Turkey, on an eth­no­mu­si­col­ogy fel­low­ship, study­ing and writ­ing about the tra­di­tional music he encoun­tered there. Don Mitchell (gui­tar) toured through­out the states as a boy alto and, after pick­ing up gui­tar, honed his singer/songwriter tal­ents play­ing for sun­set boat cruises in Maine. Dave Senft (bass, gui­tar) started arrang­ing vocal music in col­lege as musi­cal direc­tor of his a cap­pella group after which he spent two years as a street musi­cian. Sam Kapala (drums, pen­ny­whis­tle) began drum­ming at the age of seven, and his back­ground includes ample train­ing in jazz, funk, hip-hop, and rock. On top of it all, they’re all tal­ented vocal­ists. In fact, the band met in col­lege while singing together in an a cap­pella group. Lis­ten care­fully and you’ll prob­a­bly hear all of these influ­ences at play, although they blend together nat­u­rally enough that it’s easy to for­get how uncon­ven­tional the mix is.

A-Side “Malea” is the most anom­alous and prob­a­bly the most cap­ti­vat­ing cut on Darlingside’s debut EP. The band explains that it was orig­i­nally con­ceived as con­tem­po­rary dance piece, which is easy enough to imag­ine given the strong hip-hop groove, a sur­pris­ing ingre­di­ent amidst the band’s usual blend of rock, pop, and blue­grass. Kapala’s drum­ming marks this unex­pected yet sat­is­fy­ing addi­tion most notably. The spas­tic dance-club break­beat he con­jures behind the set com­pletely recon­tex­tu­al­izes the rootsy and some­what sin­is­ter string groove. The rhyth­mic hand-clap break­down dur­ing the first cho­rus is another key instance in which this acoustic ensem­ble draws upon elec­tronic influ­ences. Granted, this sort of syn­co­pated clap­ping descends most directly from fla­menco, where it is com­monly used to accen­tu­ate impas­sioned vocal crescen­dos and polyrhyth­mic gui­tar strum­ming, but in con­text, the effect resem­bles more closely a remixed Justin Tim­ber­lake club hit than any­thing off a Camarón de la Isla album. Senft’s punchy vocals unde­ni­ably have a lot to do with that. His spot on falsetto leaps are soul­ful ear candy and the way his voice skips on the word “try-y-y-y” screams sam­pled.

But Dar­ling­side doesn’t use sam­plers or drum machines. These guys often forgo even elec­tric gui­tars, opt­ing for an unplugged aes­thetic. Oddly enough, you’ll find few instances of acoustic musi­cians incor­po­rat­ing elec­tronic influ­ences into their style but the reverse is long­stand­ing tra­di­tion. Many pio­neers of elec­tronic music opted, either by pop­u­lar demand or a lack of imag­i­na­tion, to adopt acoustic con­ven­tions of com­po­si­tion and arrange­ment. Con­sider, for instance, Switched on Bach, the sem­i­nal record­ing in which an entire orches­tra was repli­cated on the Moog. But how often do you see a pianist attempt­ing to mimic a DJ scratch bat­tle? And yet, it seems only nat­ural that musi­cians grow­ing up in the dig­i­tal age would be inspired by the pop­u­lar sounds of their gen­er­a­tion. What then can we make of Darlingside’s use of acoustic instru­ments to approx­i­mate a glitch-heavy remix? For that mat­ter, what about the break­down a la Rage Against the Machine in which the expected scorch­ing elec­tric gui­tar is replaced with equally scorch­ing strings? Lis­ten and draw your own con­clu­sions, but I’m enthralled. “Malea” bumps and rips as much as the sources from which it draws inspi­ra­tion, but is warmed by a touch of earthiness.

B-Side “Good Man” is a well-crafted pop song tinged with a dose of folk. It’s not so exper­i­men­tal as “Malea” but it bet­ter rep­re­sents Darlingside’s sig­na­ture rootsy aes­thetic. The strings at the begin­ning make for an allur­ing intro, evok­ing a touch of blue­grass until a sta­dium rock drum beat cuts through the mix with unex­pected but pleas­ing force. How­ever, vocals quickly dom­i­nate. Darlingside’s spot on five-part har­monies carry the tune, giv­ing the refrain much of its punch. The bridge pro­vides a nice inter­lude and allows the lush instru­men­tals to swell briefly to the front of the mix, but it’s pri­mary func­tion seems to be to set up the epic final cho­rus which Dar­ling­side deliv­ers in good form.

“Good Man” show­cases Darlingside’s vocal tal­ent bet­ter than per­haps any other record­ing on the EP. Lis­ten and it will become abun­dantly clear that not only can every­body in the band sing, they can all sing incred­i­bly well. I won­der whether some read­ers may feel, how­ever, that they even sing a lit­tle too well. In par­tic­u­lar, lead vocal­ist Senft has a voice worth mil­lions, but this may be per­ceived as both a bless­ing and a curse. On one hand, a voice like his seems des­tined for heavy radio play and sold-out sta­di­ums around the world. On the other hand, it may not be so palat­able to indie taste buds. Most indie singers have voices that, at least clas­si­cally, would be con­sid­ered less than ideal. The genre prizes those who turn lemons into lemon­ade, bound by vocal lim­i­ta­tions to forge their own unique styles. This nat­u­rally leads to a bias against vocal­ists appeal­ing too strongly to the main­stream. I men­tion this to urge you, should nau­se­at­ing com­par­isons to Jason Mraz or John Mayer be dif­fi­cult to sup­press, not to dis­miss Dar­ling­side and keep your biases in check. Focus on how the band uti­lizes its vocal power and I expect you’ll agree that they’re con­sid­er­ably more ver­sa­tile and dynamic than any of the pop rock stars you’ve cat­e­gor­i­cally disowned.

Darlingside’s sound doesn’t fit cleanly (or even approx­i­mately) into any of the numer­ous hip sub­gen­res in vogue today. It’s also not the kind of music to be dis­sected and dei­fied by the avant-garde, for although it’s got plenty to enjoy, it’s not bizarre, chal­leng­ing, or ironic enough to war­rant such atten­tion. How­ever, it’s still a bit too quirky to be lapped up mind­lessly by the unde­serv­ing main­stream. One might won­der then where Dar­ling­side, alien­ated from both extremes, will find its most ardent support.

A fair con­cern, and yet, I can’t shake the feel­ing that this music has wide­spread appeal. It’s music that my hip col­lege sis­ter, jazz afi­cionado father, and eccen­tric grand­mother who only gen­er­ally only lis­tens to the Bea­t­les, children’s songs, and fem­i­nist spo­ken word poetry, would prob­a­bly all enjoy. And it’s music I enjoy. Pop sen­si­bil­i­ties uncon­strained by the pop aes­thetic push Dar­ling­side out­side the realm of trendy, safely beyond the obnox­ious tri­fling of those who wear their music tastes on their sleeves as a mere fash­ion acces­sory, and into deeper and more endur­ing places.

Pur­chase the full EP at www.darlingside.com/shop or check out their show tomor­row (the 10th) at Crash Man­sion!

Nate Green­berg

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