I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DARLINGSIDE-EP1 (2010).

It’s amazing in retrospect how bland the first Darlingside song on their first EP is.

Darligside is a unique band, with gorgeous harmonies and unexpected instrumentation.  Their songs are gorgeous.

But this album is very different.  The first main difference is that there is a drummer–a real drummer named Sam Kapala.  Kapala is quite good, but wow does that change the entire tone of a Darlingside song.  Second, the band doesn’t sing everything in harmony.  Rather, there is one main singer (I think David) with the other guys singing fairly standard backing vocals.

The whole Ep has a kind of raspy-voiced-folk rock exploration feel.  The first song “Good Song” still has some mandolin, but only sparsely and the chorus melody sounds so much like another song or songs that I can’t get past it

“Surround” has a bit more of that Darlingside feel–the music is a bit more esoteric.  But the vocals are the same–that raspy-voiced lead singer.

But each song gets more interesting.  “Malea” has more of that cool violin and some really good drumming.  There’s definitely flashes of greatness on this EP, including in this song–although they need to bring in some of that cool vocal stuff.

“Catbird Seat” has some lovely violin and great whispered vocals.

“All That Wrong” starts almost a capella with some quiet guitar. It builds slowly until the middle section with the fast guitar and mandolin and the squeaky violin solo which is awesome.

“In the Morning” ends the disc with a quiet vocal melody but it eventually adds more singers and starts to sound more and more like the Darlingside we know.  In part because the drumming is left out almost entirely.  It feels like with three more songs they’d be on the verge of creating Birds Say.  But not yet.

[READ: January 22, 2018] “If Told Correctly”

I think the reason for William’s constantly publication is that it is so easy to fit at least one, or even more of them into a space in a magazine.  Got a small column to fill?  Grab 7 Williams stories.

This is a collection of five such stories

None of This Would Have Been Remotely Feasible
This story begin with the narrator admitting that she is smart and likes jokes.  So this is suitable for certain people.  The police found her in a pile of snow saying she didn’t want to live anymore.  Her mother saved her life. “This morning I was walking toward a tree… A woman was crying Melba! Melba!”  Perhaps it is a dog, that’s what we’re led to believe.  The last sentence is just a random jumble of words: “After a pause I looked into the world but I never found those.”  What?

If Told Correctly It Will Center On Me
This is a series of ten sort-of-connected sentences.  A man named Jack figured in a number of them. He sat her on the bed. “He didn’t sit me– first he had to park the car.”  Her luggage was packed (over the next seven years).  Nikos had gone back to Greece.   As with every Williams story there’s always a line I like.  It has nothing to do with anything else.  This one is: “I heard the dog next door making a good impression of what my asthma attacks sound like.”

Between Midnight and 6 A.M.
Another one where there are some great lines but the whole story is just a big question mark.
There’s a woman who is small, blonde with big breasts. And then this huge chunk:

Mother had her bedroom next to the kitchen. The girl had to go through the apartment in order to get to the bathroom.
I spent the night on the stairs, not dozing off.
She was a bankrupt.
As for me, I could have put more into this.  Mother wants her sons to get ahead.
It must have been very soon after that that Mother said, “Ohhhh, Ka-a-a-a-a-y!”
We loved Kay better than we loved our mother. But by glancing back, as I approach middle age, the scale of things quite slowly,
calmly, becomes a peep show.

Wow, what the hell.  But then there is a wonderful sentence like

To get anywhere in my life at this time!–rather , to get anywhere near my wife at this time!–that can take days.  I have to go through the kitchen, the laundry–I have to go through hell!

I’d rather just read these solitary sentences.

This Has to Be the Best
This story is six sentences.
A woman follows a cat in the dark. It has a flame deign which make it easy to see.  But when she pets the cat it gets mad at her. The woman at the sex shop knows her well, but when the narrator enters Brenda said she’d never seen her before.  That’s it

Pedestal
He had chafing
Her anus is irritated.
Her vagina’s very delicate.
His sconces were shaded in a red tartan plaid and there were side views of sailing boats in frames.
He had hair cracks in his skin like in concrete.

Back on the street (were we not on the street?) a couple were walking a dog.

They could have both been exhausted and penniless.
No! As it turned out they were assembled there to talk me out of that.

It ends: “Every bone in one of these blossoms is mended.”

What the hell is going on?  It’s a Diane Williams story of course.