Quality Americana

The instrumentation is as vibrant as an open city market in “Green Light.” You feel like you’re in multiple places at the same time- The Himalayas, the Saharan Desert, the Australian Outback, an Icelandic glacier, windsurfing or hiking through a national forest… images flood into your mind as the layers of the track continue to build.

The Boston, Massachusetts based group’s latest release Everything Is Alive is “an album about loss and the struggle for a semblance of redemption” that “decisively exposes and differentiates the individual voices of the four songwriters,” a press statement said.

The band formed at Williams College over a decade ago and reached the top 50 of the Americana Music Association singles chart with “Green Light”. It reminds us of so many different influences from the Beatles and Donovan to Lord Huron and even the 90s jamband scene like a Dave Matthews Band or Blues Traveler outdoor concert.

“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,” a press statement said.

Everything is Alive was produced by Tucker Martine, who previously worked with My Morning Jacket and Iron and Wine.

Darlingside forms the idea for “Green Light”

“Green Light began with an iPhone memo of a strumming mandocello that was taken in Dave (Senft’s) basement where we store our instruments and extra gear. I then looped a few measures of it to build the rhythmic template of the song. Most of the song was quickly recorded as a demo in a guest bedroom at my house,” Harris Paseltiner said.

The group added vocal layers with Echoplex tape and Casio synthesizers along with their instrumentation, and Deni Hlavinka added the final touches with vocal experimentation.

“A few years back, Dave (Senft) sent out a Wikipedia article called “Response to sneezing” about how people respond after someone sneezes in different languages around the world,” Paseltiner said. “Here we usually say ‘Bless you!’, but elsewhere you might hear ‘Go away kitten!,’ ‘Live a hundred years!,’ or ‘Little saint!”

As the melody for “Green Light” started to take shape, Darlingside took these themes and formed a global sound to compliment the idea.

Darlingside addresses mental health

“When we hit writing season, I was struggling with feeling stuck and cooped up at home. I was at a low point for my mental health with a growing sense of hopelessness,” Paseltiner said. “This was compounding due to the challenges of quarantining at home in the suburbs for long periods of time during a pandemic… with a young kid and being sleep-deprived”

The lyrics also explore the rift in society created by a heated political climate.

“Even more, the band had been off the road and away from live performance for a long time, so I was feeling disconnected from the world,” Paseltiner said. “What started as a bunch of blessings to sneezes grew into a sort of note to self. In this note, I was trying to stop retreating into myself; and instead, to reorient towards real human connection with family and friends, to see the small but tangible glory of nature that was directly out in my yard, and even to try to see value in boring things like sidewalks and rust. I was trying to flip my mindset from feeling stuck to being able to move forward and see openings in life.”

“Green Light” incorporates many topics that weigh on our modern life with a beautifully dreamy release that opens up with each listen.

More information on Darlingside can be found here.

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