darlingside
Everything Is Alive, Darlingside’s fourth LP, marks a subtle but remarkable departure for the Boston-based group NPR once described as “exquisitely arranged, literary minded, baroque folk-pop.” While the album retains much of the lushness and sophistication of Extralife (2018) and Fish Pond Fish (2020), the band’s latest work decisively exposes and differentiates the individual voices of the band’s songwriters—a daring reinvention for a group known for ubiquitous vocal harmonies. Grappling with change both personal and universal, with quandaries domestic and existential, Everything Is Alive is an album about loss and the struggle for a semblance of redemption.
Comprised of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji and Harris Paseltiner, these like minded multi-instrumentalists who first met at Williams College in 2009, Darlingside’s career has been defined by the elegance of their compositions and the unity of their voices. Their talent for harmony and melodic world-building is part of what garnered praise from outlets like NPR, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, and what has created demand worldwide for their extraordinary live performances. Becoming beautifully unindividualized has, in other words, worked very well for Darlingside in the past. With a vigor and discipline more common to graduate-level writing workshops than to indie rock, Darlingside has, over the years, experimented with all manners of idiosyncratic methods for elevating and upholding a truly democratic process of songwriting—processes that include multiple rounds of group writing and recording exercises—all with the aim of escaping the trap that bands with multiple songwriters often fall into: ego-driven infighting and artistic incoherence.
FRAIL TALK
Formed in the foothills of Northern Colorado in early 2020, Alex Woodchek and Cor Wright of Frail Talk are creating a blooming universe of squiggly indie music for squiggly people. Like the kind surprise of a backyard garden, their songs spring up from the dirt with folk roots, soft pop colors, and burgeoning lyricism ready to welcome every listener with daydream-love.
In August of 2024, Frail Talk released their sophomore album, Microspirit. Recorded in seven days of heat-sweat-friend-magic in Silsbee, TX alongside producers Hannah Read (Lomelda), Tommy Read and with the help of Tobias Bank (drums) and Nathaniel Riley (bass). With more attention to the emotion and substance of sound than ever but with the same honesty Frail Talk has always valued, Microspirit touches on the landscape of the queer divinity in all things, and world speaking through bugs, dogs, sunsets and friends.
The album itself has already had a life in the time it’s been out, being featured on NPR Tiny Desk’s Top Shelf, getting multiple features from their video “little al” and landing singles its firsttwo weeks on Spotify’s “Fresh Finds” and “Fresh Finds Folk” playlists.
Through the art of mashing folk-pop sensibilities with strange-space-synthetic-sounds, Frail Talk offers a landscape where one’s self, surrounding, and experiences are as much a part of the songs as the music itself. The future is bright for Frail Talk. It’s all love now.
Darlingside & Frail Talk
Sunday, May 18 at 8pm
The Mel Lehan Hall at St. James
3214 West 10th Avenue
Tickets: Available online at www.roguefolk.bc.ca
e.
www.roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/ev25051820
Sunday, May 18 at 8pm
The Mel Lehan Hall at St. James
3214 West 10th Avenue
Tickets: Available online at www.roguefolk.bc.ca