Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Scairiot has one of those voices that demands to be heard. When he confronts the demons and apparitions of his past with that whiskey-soaked drawl, you can almost hear the evil spirits being exorcised as he sings. Very few contemporary songwriters can pull that off, let alone do so with such unyielding grace.
Despite Scairiot's mythical approach to songwriting, his work never seems pretentious. Saint Rose Parish is one of those all-too-rare records that twists your brain and stabs your heart, revealing humanity's best and the most frightening facets. - James Laczkowski
Daryl Scariot’s debut betrays a talent beyond the ordinary. You might call his music Americana, but it's haunted by too many ghosts for that tag to stick.
This debut is truly astonishing in its scope and ambition. - Anna Maria Stjärnell
Scairiot is an incredibly talented 28-year-old songwriter recently transplanted from the Arizona desert... The open expanse of the Southwest tinges his music with drift, and he sings of whispers and spirits with the languorous perspective of one who was born and raised in a ghost town.
Much like Greg Brown or Tom Russell, Scairiot is able to create truths in his work that can be jarring at first... - Gabe Meline
Whether Scairiot is [psychologically? molecularly?] stable or not, he's one of the most brilliant writers I've come across in my several years of music reviewing. I kept pausing the tracks and skipping back so I could scribble down the lines, word for word.
Through each song, whether it's a delicate, quiet acoustic ballad, or something more rock-flavored, or even a capella, Scairiot has the voice to carry this vibe. - Jennifer Layton
Daryl Scairiot heeft een prachtplaat afgeleverd en is vooral met de hulp van alle akoestische instrumenten (gitaren, viool, accordeon, mandoline) een rootsplaat waarin hij bewijst een uitstekend singer-songwriter te zijn. - Netherlands
Discography
Saint Rose Parish (c) 2004
Essays (c) 2006
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Here's a very heavy-handed assertion, both indelicate and immodest: Daryl Scairiot is one of the finest songwriters working today. A first-rate craftsman in the tradition of Leonard Cohen and Elvis Costello, Arizona-born Daryl Scairiot possesses a formidable command both of language and of the idiom of lyric-writing. Nihilistic, savage and scatological; tender, elegant and human, Scairiot's songs spark with misanthropic beauty. Jennifer Layton, of Indie-Music.com, has called him "one of the most brilliant writers I've come across."
Scairiot's musical universe is a collision of the majestic and the grotesque. Finding his muses in the theater of man's darker desires and dubious motivations, he creates brutal comedies in which these shadows confess themselves and may (or may not) be redeemed. The musical setting for these shadow-plays is a tempestuous avant-folk, Americana noir sound, evoking early Cohen, Steve Earle, Iron And Wine and Sixteen Horsepower; sometimes raunchy, sometimes splendid, with echoes of vaudeville and notable departures into rock and boozy, 1930's-ish cabaret jazz. First and foremost a singer, Scairiot is best-known for his powerful baritone voice and his strong, memorable melodies.
Scairiot has shared the stage with such indie luminaries as the Devil Makes Three, the Dolly Ranchers, Jason Webley and the Velvet Teen, as well as songwriters Steve Seskin, Austin Willacy and Caren Armstrong. He is featured on the Bazaar Cafe's second compilation CD, Music Stew 2. He has appeared on KRSH's Live on the Evening Krush and KRCB's Left of the Dial. He was also the subject of an LA Times article about the internet as a tool for independent musicians. Daryl was recently inducted into the Music Phone Book's Independent Artist Registry, a showcase and directory of the country's most outstanding independent acts.
Scairiot's debut album, Saint Rose Parish, features a handful of the San Francisco Bay area's finest musicians. It is a confident manifesto of the idiomatic diversity of Daryl's abilities, as well as his wit, his playfulness, his tenderness, his penchant for the haunting and his taste for the spooky. The album was released on Scairiot's own Scorpiolovesongs label. His second album, Essays, is due for release in 2006, as is a collection of jazz songs recorded with his former backing band, the Softer Monsters.
After spending four years in extravagantly expensive Northern California, Daryl recently returned to Phoenix, where he now lives with his wife and their daughter.
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