Darlingside

Friday, May 3, 2024 at 8pm at The Grand Opera House

Everything Is Alive, Darlingside’s fourth LP, marks a subtle but remarkable departure for the Boston-based quartet 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 four 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, Harris Paseltiner and David Senft, four likeminded 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 four 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.

Darlingside

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 7:30pm at South Orange PAC

If Darlingside’s first album, Birds Say (2015), focused on the past through nostalgia, and their second, Extralife (2018), contemplated uncertain futures, Fish Pond Fish stands firmly in the present, looking at what’s here, now. Dave Senft (bass), Don Mitchell (guitar, banjo), Auyon Mukharji (violin, mandolin), and Harris Paseltiner (cello, guitar) have created a natural history in song—taking us into gardens, almond groves, orchard rows, down to the ocean floor and under stars.

The band, which saw their ten-year anniversary in May of 2020, has long been praised for their harmonies and intelligent songwriting, described by NPR as “exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque Folk-Pop,” and which The New Yorker compared to David Crosby and the Byrds. Their dynamic presence (crowded tightly together onstage for the audience to witness four voices turn to a singular texture of sound), paired with their sharp wit and wordplay, have made them a live-performance favorite, and their songs treasures for literary and lyric-loving fans.

But this album showcases their broader storytelling abilities: nature is a looking glass, the songs suggest, with tracks like “Ocean Bed,” “Green + Evergreen,” “Mountain + Sea” and “Crystal Caving” making metaphors of their titles. An experience of nature is an experience of self; an experience of self is one of natural change cut and complemented by stasis.

The band started studio recording Fish Pond Fish in late 2019, when they moved into Tarquin Studios—the residential studio of Grammy Award-winning producer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National). Living and working together brought them to their very early years under one roof in Hadley, Massachusetts, which had seeded the origins of their intimate collaboration. At Katis’s suggestion, many components of the initial demos were preserved as layers in the produced tracks to retain the spirit of the initial recordings, resulting in a collection of songs that is simultaneously the most bedroom-tracked and production-heavy full-length album that the band has yet released.

Darlingside

Friday, September 27, 2019 at 8:00 PM at South Orange Performing Arts Center

Extralife is the new album by Boston-based quartet Darlingside. While the band's critically acclaimed 2015 release Birds Say was steeped in nostalgia and the conviction of youth, Extralife grapples with dystopian realities and uncertain futures. Whether ambling down a sidewalk during the apocalypse or getting stuck in a video game for eternity, the band asks, sometimes cynically, sometimes playfully: what comes next? Their erstwhile innocence is now bloodshot for the better.

Hope arrives in the form of Darlingside's signature superpower harmonies, drawing frequent comparisons to late-60's era groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash; Simon & Garfunkel; and The Byrds. And yet, their penchant for science fiction and speculative futurism counteracts any urge to pigeonhole their aesthetic as "retro." The four close friends construct every piece of their music collaboratively, pooling musical and lyrical ideas so that each song bears the imprint of four different writing voices. NPR Music dubs the result "exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop", and calls Extralife "perfectly crafted."

Darlingside perform all of their music around a single vocal microphone, inviting audiences into a lush, intimate world where four voices are truly one. Their 2016 performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival "earned an ecstatic reception and turned them into instant stars", according to The Daily Telegraph. The band tours regularly throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, and Europe.

Darlingside

Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 7:30 PM at Landmark on Main Street

Extralife is the new album by Boston-based quartet Darlingside. While the band's critically acclaimed 2015 release Birds Say was steeped in nostalgia and the conviction of youth, Extralife grapples with dystopian realities and uncertain futures. Whether ambling down a sidewalk during the apocalypse or getting stuck in a video game for eternity, the band asks, sometimes cynically, sometimes playfully: what comes next? Their erstwhile innocence is now bloodshot for the better.

Hope arrives in the form of Darlingside's signature superpower harmonies, drawing frequent comparisons to late-60's era groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash; Simon & Garfunkel; and The Byrds. And yet, their penchant for science fiction and speculative futurism counteracts any urge to pigeonhole their aesthetic as "retro." The four close friends construct every piece of their music collaboratively, pooling musical and lyrical ideas so that each song bears the imprint of four different writing voices. NPR Music dubs the result "exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop", and calls Extralife "perfectly crafted."

Darlingside perform all of their music around a single vocal microphone, inviting audiences into a lush, intimate world where four voices are truly one. Their 2016 performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival "earned an ecstatic reception and turned them into instant stars", according to The Daily Telegraph. The band tours regularly throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, and Europe.

Darlingside comes to SOPAC Dec 17th

The four members of Darlingside, Dave Senft, Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, and Harris Paseltiner met at Williams College in western Massachusetts. Two were roommates, met the third member of a singing group and then met the fourth member in that same singing group one year later. From there, the four bonded over a shared interest in songwriting, despite a diversity of musical backgrounds and performance.

As soon as Harris, the youngest, graduated, the friends moved into a house on the Connecticut River in Hadley, MA. “We had ‘family dinners’ almost every night,” says Dave, “rotating cooking for one another, and we spent a lot of our free time out on a dilapidated houseboat that we called the ‘Shack Raft.’” Building such a close bond with each other gave the group a deeply personal dynamic that many other performing groups don’t have.

Darlingside is known for their unique take on vocal arrangements and live performance. All four members will sing around a single condenser microphone in unison while passing around harmonies and melodies. NPR describes them as, “exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque Folk-Pop.” The band describes their writing process as a reflection of their deep connections with each other, each lyric reflects all their memories and experiences. Darlingside takes pride in blurring genres, making every song a blend of their unique tastes and styles.

Their second full-length album Birds Say (2015) launched them on a national tour supporting Grammy Award winner Patty Griffin at sold-out venues. Darlingside has continued their work in the studio with their 2016 EP Whippoorwill. The EP has a total of 5 songs with haunting chords and melodies reminiscent of the EPs title namesake the whippoorwill bird, a species known for its haunting call.

Opening Artist: Henry Jamison
“Burlington, Vermont-based folk singer/songwriter Henry Jamison’s anecdotal songs are written like the Great American Novel. He crafts his lyrics with metaphor, juxtaposition, and a certain poeticism resonant of vagabond folk heroes or members of the literary canon — a familial tradition, coming from a long history of writers like Civil War-era songwriter George Frederick Root or 14th Century British poet John Gower.” –Billboard.com