DARLINGSIDE - Everything Is Alive

Pain, death, loss, grief: Darlingside continue their narrative on the melancholy of everyday human existence. "How is it possible that everything alive will one day die?", the American band asks in "Sea Dogs", guided by the deep awareness that every living being also belongs to death, as a natural event — everything is born, dies, changes and is reborn. Just as clouds can be glimpsed as sea dogs, kites and balloons, nature likewise regenerates itself. It is therefore the inevitability of death and change that serves as the starting point for finding peace within oneself.

The challenge of "Everything Is Alive" is to capture the poetry and beauty of change and renewal. In taking it on, the band chooses a different creative approach from the one used on their previous albums. The captivating blend of the four voices — Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner and David Senft — remains the band's distinguishing feature, but each song now originates from a single lead voice, giving each member the chance to more forcefully express their own poetic and musical vision, which ultimately always becomes choral again, reaching rare harmonic and lyrical heights that pick up the (often overlooked) legacy of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Simon and Garfunkel, Pentangle and, why not, Lindisfarne.

Yet another little gem destined to be overlooked by critics and audiences alike, "Everything Is Alive" lines up acoustic-folk surges steeped in atmospheric dissonance and interwoven acoustic instruments, synths, voices and percussion that lend fresh shades to emotions like melancholy and wonder ("Lose The Keys"), or gentle piano chords that cradle a solitary voice before opening up into one of the album's most sweeping riffs ("All The Lights In The City").

It's genuinely hard to single out one song, among the twelve on the record, that outshines the rest. The intensity of the voices and the refined, Blue Nile-esque arrangement of "How Long Again", the fragile sweetness of the intricate yet understated orchestral-baroque-folk structure of "Down Here", the echoes of English folk in the Amazing Blondel-style madrigal of "Darkening Hour", and the fluid, sumptuous rhythmic and melodic interplay in the folk/country vein of "Baking Soda" are gems of rare charm, with few equals in today's musical landscape.

Darlingside's greatest asset is without doubt the exquisite interweaving of the four musicians' voices, but it's easy to spot equally distinctive sonic touches, like the original percussion and keyboard flourishes in the adventurous folk ballad "Right Friend", the enchanting ritual lilt of the joyful multi-voice chant on "Eliza I See", or the delicate fingerpicking of "Can't Help Falling Apart".

As mentioned in the introduction, “Everything Is Alive” is an album built on fluctuating contrasts between pain and joy, a sequence of emotions that are equally natural, vital, alive. Even when piano and voice lead the melody of the closing “The Breaking Of The Day” by the hand, it's hard not to sense the intensity lurking behind every song by the Boston band, once again the protagonist of an elegant fresco of American tradition.

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16/09/2023