Tuesday 24 January 2012
Home at last
Okay, I’m sick and tired of writing and rewriting this review. So you tell me, what do you need to know more: a) how in God’s name did The Darcys end up covering the whole of Steely Dan’s Aja, or b) how good (or bad) said cover album is?
If you said a):
Picture it: Toronto, early 2010. The Darcys are a week away from playing an anticipated Canadian Music Week when their singer Kirby Best ups and leaves the band. Boom! Not only that, but they just finished recording their self-titled sophomore album with The Dears’ Murray Lightburn as producer and Best’s voice all over it, a voice they’d no longer be needing. Double boom! They elect keyboardist/guitarist Jason Couse to step into vocal duties, fulfill the CMW commitments, and start reworking and rerecording the disc to excise the voice of singers past and try to move into the future. Except the future isn’t coming so fast. Work on the album stalls, and the band can’t move onto new music with The Darcys in limbo, so instead they half-jokingly, half-seriously decide to reinterpret a collective favourite, the aforementioned Aja. That in itself became a chore, as Aja is a complicated and intricate record to unravel and re-imagine in The Darcys’ dark, brooding tones, but they kept at it, part out of sheer stubbornness, and part out of sheer desperation to keep the creative fires burning.
If you said b):
It’s fucking incredible.
I’d never listened to the original Aja front to back before hearing The Darcys’ interpretation, so I came at the songs with fresh ears and no bias. Since then, I’ve gotten to know both versions well, and I can appreciate the reinvention and rebuilding they put into this art project turned obsession. Right from the opening, the flawless sheen of the original has been peeled away to reveal a throbbing, pulsating, dark and menacing set of songs that will bowl you over with bombast. The Darcys’ “Black Cow” will slam into your subconscious like a charging bull, their “Peg” is next to unrecognizable from the original and all the better for it, and closer “Josie” shoots daggers through your heart with it glowering, smoky, soulful sound. Yeah, bands cover songs all the time, and websites are commissioning compilations of artists doing a track from some classic modern rock albums, but I can’t think of anyone else having the audacity to tackle an album held in such high esteem as this, and have the talent and creative genius to make it sound like it was their record all along.
Aja is being released in the same way that tortured (and terrific) sophomore album made it out into the world: as a free digital download from the band’s website, starting today. It’s the second album of three releases planned by The Darcys and their new label Arts & Crafts; a third full album of original material is slated for release later this year.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under MP3, QBiM SPiNS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Austra
