Darker My Love has been together since high school friends drummer Andy “Formerly of The Distillers” Granelli and guitarist/vocalist Tim “Formerly of Nerve Agent” Pressley met guitarist Jared “Crazy Eyes” Everett and bassist/vocalist Rob “Bearded” Barbato (See ode below) in L.A. five years ago. Things were what they were up until the band finally wrote and recorded their first EP Summer Is Here and their self-titled full-length debut all in less than a year - this year, that is. In April 2006 Darker My Love signed with the small label Dangerbird Records (Silversun Pickups, La Rocca.) All of that sounds somewhat impressive until you hear their album.
Darker My Love’s music combines wall of sound elements with psychedelic rock – topped off with soft-spoken (inaudible) vocals. It’s all solidly okay, but not emotionally engaging or that great musically with the sounds falling into two categories - slow-paced and monotonous (“Hello Traveler”, “Claws And Paws”) and fast-paced and monotonous (“Fall”, “What’s A Mans Paris”.) Definitely a record that one only (only) listens to whence getting “Helium Heels”, I mean high. The standout song of Darker My Love is the first track (always a deceiving spot), “Opening” – or as I call it “Cinnamon Girl” on acid.
70’s LSD revival seems like kind of an odd choice for a couple of punk rockers and two of their old drinking buddies. But Darker My Love, they seem like a different bunch anyway - dividing their time between Echo Park and San Francisco and what not. Their musical reasoning (four minute songs that feel like six minute songs) seem like a lyric out of that Afroman song “Because I Got High” - I was gonna finish this song…but then I got high. All in all, including Presley’s ‘pink is the new black’ Bollywood booklet artwork, the same old cliché applies to Darker My Love – more style than substance. (That sure is some slick production value they’ve got going there though.)
Ode to Rob Barbato’s facial hair.
You could call it simply, “A beard”. But I see it in a more dandyish light (it must be the outlaw twinkle in Barbato’s eye.) According to Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy’s outline for gentleman’s grooming, it would appear Barbato is rocking (affecting) a (provincial) “Josephine Baker” meets French Fork. |