Toronto’s The Darcys have been hard at work on their new album, Young Believers, for the past three years. The band is releasing the lead single “House Built Around Your Voice” as a free download available on their website now (www.thedarcys.ca). With “House Built Around Your Voice”, the band debuts their new sound: dark and melodic. A tipsy brand of angular guitars and shoe gazer haze that brings bands like Do Make Say Think and Pavement to mind.
With The Dears frontman Murray Lightburn as producer, the band holed up in Montreal’s Mountain City Studio to lay down the 10 tracks that will be released as Young Believers later this year (date to be announced). The band’s last official release was a cover of Final Fantasy’s “The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead” in 2009. However, Young Believers will mark their first substantial release since their critically acclaimed debut Endless Water, in 2007.
The band will start off 2010 with a string of tour dates in Ontario and Quebec which include opening for By Divine Right in Kingston and for the Wooden Sky in Ottawa. They also recorded two acoustic videos with Southern Souls that you can see at the links below. Stay tuned for album release news.
VIEW Southern Souls videos:
http://www.southernsouls.ca/thedarcys.html
BIO
To look upon The Darcys is to invite wonder. They are the stuff of fiction - at first glance, all ties and skinny jeans and messy hair and Heidegger and old Tim Hortons cups and beards and roadside football throws. Reportedly deriving their name from Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet’s romantic interest in Pride and Prejudice, and D’Arcy McGee, the first Canadian political assassination, the five 20-something Toronto natives defy easy classification, even four years in.
But then, the Darcys have always been unorthodox. In June 2007, they recorded their first full-length album, Endless Water - not in a studio or house, but in the airy heights of the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum. The resulting disc quickly garnered attention: Exclaim! called it “a stunning collection of songs,” while the Toronto Star’s Ben Rayner - reaching to describe the band’s inventive, luminous sound - dubbed them “Toronto’s next great guitar band - equal parts Neil Young, contemporary Brit-pop and shoegazer glaze,” before finally settling on “Thom-Yorke-Does-Crazy-Horse.”
The description was an apt one. In the Spring of 2009, the band released a free download on their website: a cover of the Final Fantasy classic, “The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead.” The track’s muscular, electric stance signaled a bold departure from Owen Pallett’s original string-based arrangement, earning The Darcys’ version of the song airplay on CBC Radio 3 and Toronto’s Edge 102.1FM. Riding the single, the band embarked on its third cross-Canada tour, turning in memorable showcases at Toronto’s NXNE festival, Calgary’s Sled Island, POP Montreal, and a sold-out show at Vancouver’s historic Richards on Richards. Once again, Exclaim! praised the band’s evolving musicality: “their amped-up live interpretations recall the Constantines at their loudest and most structured, tightly hammering on inventive riffs and then retreating into soft choruses.”
After playing 90 shows in the past year, The Darcys are following the success of Endless Water and “The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead” (which was downloaded 2500+ times in a limited one-month period) by recording their sophomore album with Dears front man Murray Lightburn. Lightburn produced and mixed the forthcoming album, overseeing guest appearances by members of Broken Social Scene, Stars, and Islands.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Jan. 28 @ The Mansion, KINGSTON (w. By Divine Right, The Baird Brothers)
Jan. 30 @ L’absynthe, MONTREAL (w. The Balconies)
Jan. 31 @ Ossia, PETERBOROUGH (w. Canyon City)
Feb. 1 @ The Observatory - Algonquin College, OTTAWA (w. The Wooden Sky)
LINKS
http://www.thedarcys.ca
http://www.myspace.com/itsthedarcys
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