Darker My Love – Darker My Love (Danger Bird 2007)

Reviewed by Rekti

The City of San Francisco has been associated with ‘Summer of Love’ along with ‘wear flower in your hair’ cliche for over 30 years now, it’s citizen apparently getting used with middle aged tourist wander around in the streets trying to find Grateful Dead’s head quarter for a typical photographic souvenir.

These cliche too, what made young musician alike whose paving their way in the music industry desperately tagged as ‘Psychedelic Rock Revivalist’, and made Jefferson Airplane feels like a slight bitter taste on their throat after vomiting in the morning, every time they compared to the name. Especially for Darker My Love, who is actually came from Los Angeles, CA.

Comparisons to the likes of Jeffersons (or other late 60’s band that affiliated with that Summer of Love) is not only too obvious but unobserved. It is an important fact that Tim Presley (duitar/vocal) and Andy Granelli (drums) are formerly a member of the band The Nerve Agents and Andy formerly plays drum for The Distillers, which fairly explain why I could slightly sense proto-punk element in Darker My Love sounds. What they have in conscience is apparently more of The Stooges than The Doors. And the group’s sound is often compared to bands such as Can and My Bloody Valentine which totally make sense.

Other fact which also amuse me a lot is that in Spring 2006, Presley and Barbato (bass/vocal) became members of Manchester (U.K.)-based group The Fall. They both are featured prominently on The Fall’s most recent album, Reformation Post TLC. This could be an indication of their broad musicianship and artistry.

Their self titled debut album is a combination of sleazy ambient pop with blistering fuzzy stomper. Their emotion flood fluently through several mood changes between songs. Some tracks are lazy and others are sometime extremely furious. That changes even happen in one song, if you listen to it firmly it could make you want to check in to the mental institution voluntarily. Their songs are not in the tradition of monotonic stoner rock of The Warlocks. They sounds ethereal but has a very compressed meanings in someway.

My personal favorites are ‘Fall’ and ‘Summer Is Here’. You could barely hear what Presley and Barbato singing about but it does make sense perfectly as melodic message rather than literal. It’s exactly the same feeling that you feel when you listen to ‘Touched’ by My Bloody Valentine.

You can download their S/T album for free :

Darker My Love – Darker My Love (album) [.zip]

Darker My Love – Summer Is Here (Video)