the darcys takeover

For the record, The Darcys are named after Mr. Darcy, from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. When we started the band I was in the final year of an English degree but I’d neglected to take the first year survey course, so there I was, and P&P was on the syllabus. Jason was in that class too and I remember watching the BBC miniseries with him at my apartment before the exam and drinking too much wine. So sure, our band’s named after a character from a Jane Austen book, but that’s not the kind of thing we generally like to read these days.

For some reason we’ve bonded over books that fixate on death: Don Delillo’s White Noise, Cormac McCarthy’s Cities Of The Plain, Michael Winter’s The Architects Are Here, are all good examples. These last two are the kinds of books where good things only happen so that bad things can happen later, things are only given to characters to be taken away. I guess you could call us bleak on that count. On the other hand, you could argue that a healthy pre-occupation with death gives you a greater appreciation for the things you have in this life. Like rock ‘n roll instruments, a warm coat, friends and lovers, a van.

There’s a bit from Cities Of the Plain that always sticks in my head where a cowboy called John Grady is trying to fix this run down old cabin and says to a cowboy called Billy something like “we might could fix it up” and Billy replies “what’s this we shit, you got a rat in your pocket?” You know he’s gonna help him, but he’s got to give John a hard time first, because what he’s trying to accomplish, it’s sort of a fool’s errand. The story’s really about friends using all the resources and power at their disposal to help each other out and watch each other’s backs even when it seems like everything’s completely lost. Which is sometimes what it feels like being in a band.

In the spirit of the kinds of writing we enjoy I’ve put together a paragraph length story that truly happened to us just last year:

It was snowing when we crossed the border and by the time we got to Ohio it was a blizzard and there were cars skidding cross the road. We weren’t used to the GPS and I let it take us down this little two lane highway next to a river. We saw more cars skidding and we were slipping ourselves. We started slipping into the wrong lane and there was a transport truck coming to hit us. This is it, we’re gonna die, and the guys in the back woke up. At the last second Wes got back control of the van and steered it into the proper lane. We pulled onto someone’s property and sat in silence. I looked over and saw the left side mirror’d been clipped clean off. We were all in shock and fell asleep for a bit until a policewoman tapped our window and told us move along and I couldn’t help but think of that movie Fargo. The snow followed us all the way down to Arkansas and a few days after that we were in San Diego to start a tour.

—–

This post was written by David Hurlow of The Darcys as part of their Takeover of Indie Music Filter. Find The Darcys online or on twitter.

I love almost all the records that Phil Elverum has released. Either as The Microphones, or later, when he changed his “band” name to Mount Eerie, I’ve always eagerly awaited his creative output and put special time aside to listen to each one in full for the first time.  Within The Darcys, I am alone in my appreciation of Phil Elverum. The first few tours we went on I tried my best to push my enjoyment of Elverum’s work on to the other members of the band, by saying things like “Oh, you just have to listen to all of it really loud, and understand it’s all recorded to tape!” and “He did this all by himself! With borrowed gear and only two microphones!” This usually fell on to deaf ears, until one day I finally gave up. Now while we’re on tour, Elverum’s discography remains confined to my headphones, either lounging in the back of the van during a long drive, or late at night before falling asleep.  I have accepted this.

For some reason, 2005’s No Flashlight: Songs of the Fulfilled Night is the one I hold in highest regard.  On everything Phil Elverum releases, he seems to create an entire world to envelope the listener, but something about No Flashlight sticks out to me.  Critically, the album was received very poorly. Pitchfork Media, the music blog that gave his previous record Mount Eerie an 8.9 and named it Best New Music, and The Glow Pt. 2 before that a 9.3 and crowned it the Best Record of 2001, called No Flashlight a “textural train-wreck that sabotages the music before one can focus on lyrics or guitar lines.” But even though his work has never been a very “easy” listen, with No Flashlight Phil seems to go deeper into the rabbit hole that he himself created. It’s almost as if he’s used every previous release to build a universe, and now with No Flashlight he is fully immersed and living in his created cosmos, unaware and unaffected by the thoughts and opinions of others. This is what fascinates me.

On No Flashlight, Phil Elverum doesn’t give a fuck what you or I think, and this allows for something truly interesting and personal to be created. There are long drones of washed out guitars and synthesizers, drums that were actually just water coolers banged together, singing with little to no melody, field recordings of wolves howling in the distance, and a whole lot of tape hiss. Honestly, as I read that last sentence back, it sounds terrible. It doesn’t come across as a record anyone would enjoy, but something inside just resonates with me. More than anyone else I know of, he seems to use the actual tape machine as an instrument, pushing extremely hot signal into it to get a tape distortion sound unlike any I’ve ever heard. If you want a record that is easy to get into, you shouldn’t even bother with this album. But if you feel like challenging your tastes a bit, I would recommend giving this a shot. And hey, if you hate it, I totally understand.

—–

This post was written by Michael le Riche of The Darcys as part of their Takeover of Indie Music Filter. Find The Darcys online or on twitter.

I never wanted to be a front man. When I was young and getting into playing and writing music I never saw it as part of my personality, my ambition, or what I wanted to do with my life. But things change.

While some people spend years singing into the mirror, lifting stage moves and banter from their idols, I was concerned with writing. For some reason I believed that I would be able to craft and push some kind of musical vision into the world without acknowledging that essential connective tissue between artist and audience. Thinking back I was probably just listening to too much Do Make Say Think and Godspeed You Black Emperor.

For a period of time while we were first really developing our process and aesthetic we had someone else singing in our band. However it quickly became clear that pushing our desires through another individual was both extremely difficult and totally exhausting. After that relationship reached a breaking point, it was clear what my new role was going to be. All of the sudden I wished I had spent all of that time in front of the mirror, and the concept of being a front man that I had discarded so many years ago became a major interest to me. I realized that if I wanted people to connect with the music we wanted to make, I had to find a way to make myself a conduit into our world.

Here are a couple of memorable videos of great frontmen doing their thing. Also feel free to watch any live Queen video you can find.

Tom Petty – “Breakdown” (1985).

Swagger. Tom is a legend in so many ways but this really encapsulates his sheer confidence and enjoyment of performance. No doubt they were “partying” pretty hard around this time, but I don’t think that should detract from how wicked this example of audience participation and general coolness is.

Radiohead – “Idiotheque” on SNL (2000).

We get a lot of flak for the whole Radiohead thing, so lets just be open about it. This is fucking amazing. Its like Thom is channeling the song and the decay of the entire universe through his voice all at once. There is nothing more chilling than watching someone get entirely lost in a performance. Plus the way he slams the mic down at the end is badass.

Beck – “Debra” (1999)

Is Beck is the coolest guy ever? Here he is at his best, just going for it, having fun and selling the shit out of it.

D’Angelo – “Send It On” (?)

Can this guy sing? I can’t tell. Oh yeah, he is also beautiful. We like D’Angelo, ok? Give us a break.

—–

This post was written by Jason Couse of The Darcys as part of their Takeover of Indie Music Filter. Find The Darcys online or on twitter.

In the early stages of Warring we established two rules:

1. We had to grow as writers and players.

2. We would not make something that sounded like our previous efforts.

For a long time we had an intense fear of referencing other bands. We tried to be extremely insular with our self-titled record but when it came out everyone said we sounded like Radiohead. Apparently Radiohead has insular on lock-down. I can’t tell you how many times we scrapped an idea because it sounded too much like Steely Dan, The Dears or the theme song to the X-Files. After a while we could find a problem with just about any idea and I started to wonder if this was a valid or even a healthy process.

We decided that starting from an established point would help us change our sound and find our new voice. So we worked from established grooves, production ideas and canonical synth sounds. Eventually we dragged each idea into a new and original space virtually unrecognizable from its origin. We wanted to explore our influences and put them through The Darcys’ lens to create something new and our own.

We spent a lot of time forcing our broad influences into bed with each other. How would Beck’s Sea Change react with D’Angelo’s Voodoo? We knew that exploring these collisions would affect our compositions and maybe even kick-start some of the stalled ones.

There is never a moment on Warring where I hear another band or a borrowed idea. I hear a record that is cohesive and unique. That said, I think it’s important to highlight your inspirations and be honest about your process. Therefore, I decided to curate a playlist that illuminates a number of our sonic reference points. There are a lot of amazing records in this world and the following songs are just a few that really spoke to us during the making of Warring.

WAR WAS ALWAYS THERE: The Songs The Influenced Warring

You can stream Warring below.

—–

This post was written by Wes Marskell of The Darcys as part of their Takeover of Indie Music Filter. Find The Darcys online or on twitter.