Darlingside – Fish Pond Fish
Thirty Tigers – 9 October 2020
For a four-piece band whose shtick is gathering around the same microphone to sing and strum, the pandemic and lockdown must have hit pretty hard. But the Boston-based indie/folk band Darlingside have turned adversity into adventure and separation into sensation. This is an album for our times because it’s an album for all times.
When Don Mitchell (vocals, guitar, banjo), Auyon Mukharji (vocals, violin, mandolin), Harris Paseltiner (vocals, cello, guitar) and Dave Senft (vocals, bass) gathered in the studio in late 2019 to record their third full-length album it was simpler times. On the cusp of their tenth year as a group, they went back to basics.
In their early years in Massachusetts, the band lived and wrote together. So they planned to recapture those times. All four packed up and moved into Tarquin Studios, the residential studio of Grammy Award-winning producer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) in Bridgeport, Connecticut. With few distractions, and plenty of time together the material that makes up this album was written and honed during late-night and early morning sessions.
“There’s truth beyond the bounds of your horizons,” Auyon Mukharji says of collaborating to create the album with his three bandmates. “It’s like you’re searching through three-fourths of foreign consciousness. Bringing you to a place you couldn’t imagine. You move beyond yourself.”
But in the final weeks of recording, as lyrics and arrangements were being crafted for release, the close-knit group were forced apart. So, the album was finalised in very different circumstances, by email and video calls with each member quarantined in separate locations.
All this has very little bearing on the finished album. Which feels like a wave of ocean washing over you. But not the airbrush-perfection of a holiday brochure – sun, surf and white sand – instead it’s awash with seaweed, foam, fish and little creatures… this is a journey under the surface. Ploughing the depths but uncovering the light.
Darlingside inhabit the same stellar spirituality of harmony groups such as Crosby Stills and Nash, the Beach Boys or Fleet Foxes in full flight. Listening to Fish Pond Fish is a joyous, exhilarating experience, particularly when the hooks are as tasty as on Green + Evergreen, Crystal Caving and Ocean Bed.
In his introduction on Darlingside’s website, writer and art curator Ben Shattuck describes the album as, “…one of geology, meteorology, ornithology, astronomy and botany… We’re led through old growth forests, down to the deep sea’s ‘true blue bottom where the light ends,’ and up to a few singled-out stars that shine ‘ochre’ overhead.”
The result is a beguiling collection. It’s full of lyrical insights, moments of inspiration and often pure joy. Yet the harmonies aren’t saccharin, there’s always a twinge of melancholy. While in celebration of the exuberance of the natural world, there is a shadow. It’s a call to revel in creation but recognise that time is running out.
How much of this is folk, pop or chamber-rock is really rather irrelevant. Above and beyond the comparisons with other groups (as with my examples earlier) it’s only an attempt to put up a signpost that points in their direction. Because Darlingside are unique. They’re a gestalt of four voices and instruments that blend so perfectly it’s impossible (unnecessary) to single out individual contributions. Who is singing when and where is sacrificed for the superiority of the song at that moment. It’s democratic but also selfless.
And the album is a rallying cry to be the same. To dwell, to exist and revel in the moment. But not in a hedonistic way, in an acceptance that your being is a part of something superior. And something worth fighting for. It’s hard to describe the effect of the album. Returning to the earlier analogy, a witness can only hint at the vastness and power of the ocean. To feel it, you’ve got to dive in.
Green + Evergreen (Distantly Social Sessions):
Fish Pond Fish is released on 9th October 2020