Music
Press
Melodic noise rockers play Riverside Wednesday
12:31 PM PDT on Wednesday, October 14, 2009
By VANESSA FRANKO
The Press-Enterprise
Melodic noise rock outfit Darker My Love is touring with Coachella '09 vets A Place to Bury Strangers, stopping at The Casbah in San Diego tonight (Thursday) and The Echo in Los Angeles on Friday.
However, the band has its own headlining show at UC-Riverside on Wednesday at The Barn with Norse Horse as part of The Barn's weekly concert series.
Bassist Rob Barbato, who lived in Idyllwild for a time, said the band would be road-testing mostly new songs on their tour dates.
"Songs are kind of never finished because you can keep playing them live," he said in a recent telephone interview.
The band has a noise rock element a la My Bloody Valentine, but also melodic sensibilities.
The members of Darker My Love also keep a tour blog about their misadventures on the road.
For us it helps is remember what we did," Barbato said. "You're really tired and it's kind of a blur because you're just driving a lot."
It also humanizes the band. Despite its indie rock label and buzz, there's no air of pretension around the group.
"We're not necessarily the most serious people or who try to put on some super cool front. We're just dudes like everyone else," he said. - www.inlandsocal.com
Darker My Love are taking their massive wall of fuzz-filled guitars, mesmerizing beats and stratospheric harmonies on the road, as they join New York noisemakers A Place to Bury Strangers for a national tour. The two-week sonic onslaught will sprint across the country before winding down in Los Angeles on October 16th. Immediately following this jaunt, the band will cross the Atlantic to share their surreal live show with European audiences, teaming up with English post-punk revivalists White Lies.
Meanwhile, "Blue Day," the second single off the band's acclaimed sophomore album, 2 (Dangerbird Records), has been selected for inclusion in the all-new Guitar Hero® 5, alongside tracks from the likes of the Rolling Stones, White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth. Lauded by the Los Angeles Times for its "Sabbath stomp and shoe-gazey simmer," the infectious "Blue Day" is instantly playable in the latest edition of the top-selling video game franchise, available in stores now.
DARKER MY LOVE ON TOUR WITH A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
October 5 - Washington, D.C. @ DC9
October 6 - Chapel Hill, N.C. @ Local 506
October 7 - Atlanta, Ga. @ Drunken Unicorn
October 8 - Tallahasee, Fla. @ Club Downunder
October 9 - New Orleans, La. @ One Eyed Jacks
October 10 - Dallas, Texas @ The Lounge on Elm Street
October 11 - Austin, Texas @ Mohawk
October 13 - Tucson, Ariz. @ Plush
October 14 - Riverside, Calif. @ University of California-Riverside*
October 15 - San Diego, Calif. @ The Casbah
October 16 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Echoplex
* Without A Place To Bury Strangers - www.pluginmusic.com
Darker My Love
@ Johnny Brenda's
Philadelphia, PA
December 4, 2008
Reviewed By: Izzy Cihak
Although their latest album, 2, is surprisingly accessible, beards are far from the only fuzziness left of Neo Psychedelic Shoegazers Darker My Love. They may have recently returned from a jaunt with Indie Pop faves the Dandy Warhols, where they appeared as bourgeoning rock stars in the vain of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club circa 2002, but their recent headlining tour returns them to coyly rocking clubs with violent hails of feedback and pleasantly pretentious musicality generally reserved for godlike geniuses of the Lower East Side. Their five-minute looping video of "trippy" footage of deep and mysterious things like fish and teeth was more than a little trite. And many of those who filled the venue were getting a little too into it in an I'm-rocking-out-in-khakis kind of way. And, when you really thought about it, you knew you could never justifiably describe the experience as a modern equivalent to "rockin' with the Velvet's at the Factory in '67." But when the lights went down and you were hit with those screaming waves of hipster psychedelia, you really fuckin' wanted to.
- http://highvoltagemagazine.com
The albums below are the ones I kept turning to when I just wanted to kick back and enjoy some tunes. Sure, there was more artistically challenging stuff released this year than some of the selections below — and I certainly do appreciate that sort of thing — but my year end lists reflect which music ultimately did for me what I think rock and/or roll is ultimately meant to do to any listener: it grabbed me by the heart and/or crotch and wouldn’t let go.
Darker My Love, 2
These West Coasters are handy at transforming drone into hooks, incorporating groovy hooks with guitars turned to 11. The group has discovered expert ways to weave their obvious influences into their sound, for evidence of this check out the deliciously unholy mixture of The Beach Boys, My Bloody Valentine, and The Jesus and Mary Chain on “Two Ways Out.” When I listen to that song I picture the beach on one of those freak of nature days where it’s simultaneously sunny and raining - www.donewaiting.com
Evidently, Darker My Love learned the hard way that LA ain’t a land of angels. (Hell, all you gotta do is drive with windows down on Alvarado St). The LA band's track “Pharoah Sanders Tomb” percolates with trippy psychedelic sound effects and brackish guitar grind, ala Austin’s The Black Angels after a day sizzling on an LA sidewalk. Meanwhile, the shrill, subhuman echos teamed with the sarcastic tone of "I feel so comfortable" towards the end of “Pharoah” tickles ones' inner demons. Dark and festering – the band plays like they’re ready to destroy those technicolor sunsets and concrete freeway jungles one chord change at a time. We're addicted. - rcrdlbl.com
hat special time of year has rolled around again and nestled in between the turkey, yams and various fixin’s you will find Filter’s Top 10 Albums of the year. Yes, we’ve been able to cut out the fist-fights, name-calling and simmering resentment of years past and put aside our personal predilections for Norwegian speed-metal or modern polka hits to unite together and get our yearly rundown out to you, our gentle readers, before the holiday crush. So make no mistake, these are without doubt the finest records of the year, they all come highly recommended and would look and sound smashing in your collection.
As well as the Official Filter Top 10, you'll be able to see our individual staff picks, to see who else was in the running. Check it all out then head over to the Filter Blog to sound off on our choices!
Beth Carmellini
1. Facing New York, Get Hot (Five One)
2. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular (Columbia)
3. Darker My Love, 2 (Dangerbird)
4. Mogwai, The Hawk is Howling (Matador)
5. Duffy, Rockferry (Mercury)
6. What Made Milwaukee Famous, What Doesn’t Kill Us (Barsuk)
7. Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree (Mute)
8. TV On The Radio, Dear Science (Interscope)
9. Breeders, Mountain Battles (4AD)
10. Lykke Li, Youth Novels (Atlantic) - Filter Magazine
Abstract
What you read is what you get with the Los Angeles-based band Darker My Love. Think the band's name must mean that it plays gloomy, feedback-laden rock? You're correct. Think the album name 2 means this is Darker My Love's sophomore set? Right again. You should go on Jeopardy. The band's self-titled debut was released in 2006. I sense a Zeppelin homage. Darker My Love actually isn't all dark and dreary here. Some snippets of shimmery pop shine through, which might have been pushed to the forefront by producer Dave Cooley, who has worked with fellow Angeleno outfit Silversun Pickups.
***
Band: http://darkermydudes.blogspot.com
Label: http://www.dangerbirdrecords.com
~ John Zeiss
Review
By Travis Woods
Prefix Rating 8.0
Your Rating
Login to rate this post
Darker My Love’s 2 is an ink-bloomed valentine to the bloodied, barbed-wire kissed chain of bands (puns intended) that stretches from the Reid brothers’ taut fuzz-pop to Kevin Shields’ sine-drone majestics to the album that the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s first LP hinted at and their subsequent discs brutally, repetitively squelched. Cohesive where their first album was amorphous, 2 roots itself firmly in the shoegaze-revival genre without drowning in the tarpit of that scene’s trappings. Despite a band name that Rorschachs imagery of eyeliner’d dandies with Scissorhands hair setting their diary entries to morosely anemic goth-schlock pop, this is an album that textures its gritty, nicotine-sweat rockers with coruscating waves of lustrous, even gorgeous, popshimmer guitar grooves and melodies.
It’s a surprisingly balanced LP, one in which the brutal crush of the slash-riffed hooks and leg-slapped backbeat of “Northern Soul” share space with the high-end vocal swoons and cough-syrupy Beach Boys drones of “Even in Your Lightest Day” or “All the Hurry and Wait.” And, unlike some other nu-gazers, they fall closer in line with a band like the Silversun Pickups, in which their influences prism into waves of new sounds rather than wind-tunneled echoes of whatever vinyl spirals were spinning in their apartments before the drive to the studio.
More so than their debut, Darker My Love’s 2 succeeds in filtering their feedback-riddled family tree into a work that not only stands on its own but also that casts a large and branch-gnarled shadow from which their fellow bands will have to sound twice as good in order to escape.
- September 3, 2008 - prefixmag.com
Discography
EPs-
*Darker My Love EP (2004, Tarantulas Records)
Albums-
*Darker My Love (2006, Dangerbird Records)
*2 (2008, Dangerbird Records)
Compilations-
*Take Action! Vol. 5
Splits-
*Darker My Love/Moccasin Split 12" (2007, I Hate Rock N Roll Records)
*Darker My Love/The Dandy Warhols Split 7" (2008, Dangerbird/Beat The World Records)
Singles-
*"Summer Is Here" (2005)
*"Two Ways Out" (2008)
RADIO PLAY : "Two Ways Out", "Blue Day"
Photos
Bio
Let’s not fuck about here. It’s 2008. Some people say the world is coming to a close. The sun is getting hotter. Ice isn’t what it used to be. Irony is dead, and spring no longer exists.
Everyone everywhere is sick and tired of the rock and roll ruse. And, so, an authentic rock and roll outfit has its work cut out. On its sophomore release, 2, Darker My Love is sure as hell up for the task at hand. This is a band with a big engine. They paint on a titanic canvas. It’s a widescreen, 3D, posi-traction kind of scenario. They want to get you worked up and they want to take you somewhere. “Music is an escape,” explains drummer Andy Granelli.
This band has no choice but to do what they do: they are a gang and their weapons are musical prowess and artistic ambition. Words + music + feeling = what these five guys were put on earth to do.
Though they come from all over the U.S. – Andy and Tim Presley from the Bay Area, Jared Everett from Pennsylvania, Rob Barbato from Boston and Will Canzoneri from Mississippi – they all came up through the same portal: back room and basement shows, forgettable bands and passion they can’t shake. For one, it was 45-minute drives through rural Pennsylvania to some stenchy hellhole of a basement to see five local bands; for another it was cruising BART at 16 to get to Gilman Street in Berkeley to see Swingin’ Utters. Over in Boston, Rob was soaking up Grateful Dead, briefly trying on a jazz habit (“I fancied myself a jazz dude. And then realized I wasn’t.”). Five guys, four cities, one conclusion: they’d been infected by rock and roll.
Andy begins, “I bought a drum set in eighth grade and learned how to play… kind of.” “It was all for the emotion,” explains Tim, while Jared finishes, “It’s why we’re still here.”
Sitting with Darker My Love, you realize things are clear among them. They know who they are. And they know who they are not. They work hard. They finish each other’s sentences. They take direction when they know it’s needed. 2 was produced by Dave Cooley (Silversun Pickups, J Dilla) who Rob describes as “a good guide through this endeavor.” He adds, “It was a large scale record. He was really good at encouraging us and experimenting with different ideas.”
“We didn’t want to work with anybody,” reveals Jared. “We were used to doing it on our own. Without Dave the record wouldn’t have been made the same way.” Mixing duties were handled by Tony Hoffer (The Kooks, Air).
Enough talk. Let’s listen.
As the needle drops, “Northern Soul” sets the pace. This ride is going somewhere dark. You’re already on the train and you ain’t getting off. Next comes “Blue Day,” which pins and mounts you like a butterfly.
“Two Ways Out” is everything a great rock single ought to be: reaching, bright and –get this– hopeful. Rob explains: “I was in the hospital in LA with a 105º fever. I felt really alone. The band started driving to New York to play a show. Meanwhile, my cell phone was dead and I had a lot of time to think. It was a scary experience. You realize though, bad stuff does happen to you and a positive mental outlook can get you out of any situation. Even at your lowest moment.”
Tim finishes the thought: “You have to make peace with either one.”
“Even In Your Lightest Day” is an ode to day job dread. “Like, I’d rather be anywhere else than going through this door,” says Tim. The record persists with no relief. The more you hear, the more you feel. And Darker My Love is a band that you must feel. If you dig, you dig. If you don’t, you will. All you need is 45 minutes and six seconds. If you have headphones, use ‘em. If your stereo’s got a tachometer, all the better.
This is a band that doesn’t merely want your attention. It aims to do something with it. There ain’t no come ons, put ons, build ups or tear downs. They are not here to posit or pontificate. They are here to affect your now, your here, your is. Sometimes a rock and roll outfit is loved for saying what others find hard to say – the voice of the oppressed, the shit on. Darker My Love isn’t concerned with all that. They are here to take you away from all that thinking stuff.
This quintet sits in the cosmic chaparral on the astro chart of rock and roll. One notch to left is The Meters (you can feel this band in your fifth house). One notch to the right is a gathering of Wild Angels (the back of your skull is thrust into the headrest from the start). You want to reference all kinds of other bands, scenes, moments when talking DML. Go right ahead. But be sure you plot a steady course. Don’t talk about shimmering guitars and fuzz boxes or psychedelic nonsense. It’s too late for all that. I already told you irony is dead. There’s a siren screaming. Can you hear it?
“This record is a hitchhiker’s guide to getting through LA,” says Jared. The intensity in his eyes underlines the point.
“LA’s supposed to be this la-la land,” says Tim. “But it’s got some dark secrets.”
They go on to talk about
Links
