SOUNDTRACK: DARLINGSIDE-“Ocean Bed” (2020).
Today, Darlingside announced the release of a new song–a wonderful surprise–and an upcoming new album.
The basic sound of Darlingside doesn’t change (thank goodness), but on their last album, they mixed things up by throwing in some electronic sounds.
There’s no electronic sounds on this song (which doesn’t mean there are non on the album) but there is a lot more percussion than usual.
It opens up with some thumping drums. Is there a drummer? It’s more than the kick drum they usually use. Then comes the mandolin and some clapping. A smooth grooving bass slides in and then, as the voices come in, everything settles down into pure Darlingside.
The verses are individual voice but the bridges are gorgeous harmonies. The song moves swiftly with a percussion backing as the lead voices sing.
Then the surprise–the middle is practically a drum solo–with rumbling percussion and some kind of low pulsing note (is that secret electronics after all) that adds almost a sinister feel. But that segue leads right back to the mandolin.
I love that this song can sound so much like Darlingside and yet also shows them changing things up. In some ways it’s a step back since their first album had a drummer and their later ones did not. But this drumming and percussion is a very different sound. very exciting–how will they do it live?
[READ: July 10, 2020] “Black Mountain, 1977”
This issue of the New Yorker has a series of essays called Influences. Since I have read most of these authors and since I like to hear the story behind the story, I figured I’d read these pieces as well.
Donald Antrim’s essay is considerably shorter and much more harrowing than the previous one.
Antrim tells of the horrible situation that his mother grew up in. His mother’s mother was a cruel parent, carrying out “an aggressive campaign against her daughter’s body, even going so far as to advocate unnecessary surgeries for her only child,”
His mother’s father was a meek and cowed alcoholic who never stood up to his wife.
If he had stood up to his wife, would Antrim’s mother have been something other than a “lonely, distrustful, ragingly self-obliterative woman”? Frankly, it’s amazing she had a child at all.
It is because of this situation with mother and daughter that Donald and his grandfather built a platform of love for each other based on guilt, grief and sorrow. as they got older, they spent a lot of time together–upsetting Donald’s grandmother who was a more subdued but still stern woman (why didn’t his grandfather leave her?).
In 1977, the summer before he was to go to college, his grandparents bought a cottage in Black Mountain, North Carolina and invited him to come out and help to fix it up. His home life was terrible (his mother’s alcoholism was unchecked and his parents fought all the time), so of course he said yes.
But he didn’t do any work there–he drove around, he seemed to be protesting …something. His family? Or just Southern Protestantism in general? Then guilt would settle in and he would head back, determined to help.
The main task was to remove and repair (never replace) the warped and painted-shut windows. It was a painstakingly slow process that grandfather’s deliberateness seemed to make even slower. He touche every piece of wood like a blind man trying to read it He was almost a romantic for “honest labor.” Donald imagined his grandfather was teaching him to value the work that no one except the laborer would ever notice.
When Donald was a young writer and his grandfather was supporting him as he had supported Donald’s mother through most of her life, his grandfather would ask aloud whether his daughter would be okay. Donald believed he was asking it of him as well.
But Donald knew that the lessons his grandfather taught him would always be there keeping watch over him.
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