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THE DARKNESS
The Darkness announce Permission To Land… Again; a special 20th Anniversary reissue collection, to be released on October 6th 2023 via Warner Music.
Permission To Land was originally released in 2003 via Atlantic Records and stormed to the top of the UK Albums chart, where it remained for four weeks, and spent 53 weeks in the Top 100. It achieved the band three BRIT Awards, including British Album Of The Year, British Group and British Rock Act, where they fended off competition from the likes of Blur, Radiohead, Sugababes, Muse, Primal Scream and more. The record has sold over 1.4 million copies to date.
Permission To Land was originally released in 2003 via Atlantic Records and stormed to the top of the UK Albums chart, where it remained for four weeks, and spent 53 weeks in the Top 100. It achieved the band three BRIT Awards, including British Album Of The Year, British Group and British Rock Act, where they fended off competition from the likes of Blur, Radiohead, Sugababes, Muse, Primal Scream and more. The record has sold over 1.4 million copies to date.
TRACK LISTING
1 LP:
PERMISSION TO LAND (2003)
SIDE A
Black Shuck [3:21]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [2:46]
Growing On Me [3:30]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [3:36]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:19]
SIDE B
Givin' Up [3:34]
Stuck In A Rut [3:18]
Friday Night [2:56]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [5:57]
Holding My Own [4:57]
2CD Edition:
CD1: PERMISSION TO LAND
Black Shuck
Get Your Hands Off My Woman
Growing On Me
I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Love Is Only A Feeling
Givin’ Up
Stuck In A Rut
Friday Night
Love On The Rocks With No Ice
Holding My Own
BONUS TRACKS:
DEMOS
Black Shuck (Demo)
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Demo)
Out Of My Hands (Demo)
Live ’Til I Die (Demo)
Love On The Rocks With No Ice (Demo)
Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us (Demo)
CD2: Singles, B-sides & Non-album Tracks
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (2002 Version)
Love On The Rocks With No Ice (2002 Version)
Love Is Only A Feeling (2002 Version)
Get Your Hands Off My Woman (2003 Clean Version)
The Best Of Me
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Single Version)
Out Of My Hands
Makin’ Out
Physical Sex
How Dare You Call This Love?
Bareback
Planning Permission
Curse Of The Tollund Man
Get Your Hands Off My Woman...Again (2004 Explicit)
I Love You 5 Times
Get Your Hands Off My Woman...Again (2004 Clean)
Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)
5LP Box Set:
LP1: PERMISSION TO LAND (2003)
SIDE A
Black Shuck [3:21]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [2:46]
Growing On Me [3:30]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [3:36]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:19]
SIDE B
Givin' Up [3:34]
Stuck In A Rut [3:18]
Friday Night [2:56]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [5:57]
Holding My Own [4:57]
LP2: STUDIO BONUS TRACKS
SIDE C
Black Shuck (Demo) [3:56]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Demo) [3:54]
Out Of My Hands (Demo) [3:33]
Live ’Til I Die (Demo) [3:44]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice (Demo) [5:48]
SIDE D
Nothin's Gonna Stop Us (Demo) [2:55]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (2002 Version) [3:38]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice (2002 Version) [6:07]
Love Is Only A Feeling (2002 Version) [4:21]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman (2003 Clean Version) [2:47]
LP3: STUDIO BONUS TRACKS
SIDE E
The Best Of Me [3:27]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Single Version) [3:39]
Out Of My Hands [3:29]
Makin Out [3:41]
Physical Sex [3:33]
How Dare You Call This Love [3:52]
SIDE F
Bareback [3:06]
Planning Permission [2:28]
Curse Of The Tollund Man [3:09]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman...Again (2004 Explicit) [2:41]
I Love You 5 Times [3:42]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman...Again (2004 Clean) [2:42]
Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) [3:31]
LP4: LIVE AT KNEBWORTH 2003
SIDE G
Growing On Me [3:30]
The Best Of Me [3:09]
Makin’ Out [6:02]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [3:38]
SIDE H
Stuck In A Rut [5:57]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [5:12]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [10:17]
LP5: LIVE AT THE ASTORIA 2003
SIDE I
Black Shuck [3:45]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:14]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [4:31]
Friday Night [4:22]
SIDE J
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [4:47]
Buffet [2:00]
Giving Up [4:04]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [10:04]
4CD+DVD:
CD1: PERMISSION TO LAND (2003)
Black Shuck [3:21]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [2:46]
Growing On Me [3:30]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [3:36]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:19]
Givin' Up [3:34]
Stuck In A Rut [3:18]
Friday Night [2:56]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [5:57]
Holding My Own [4:57]
BONUS TRACKS: DEMOS
Black Shuck (Demo) [3:56]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Demo) [3:54]
CD2: SINGLES, B-SIDES & NON-ALBUM TRACKS
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (2002 Version) [3:38]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice (2002 Version) [6:07]
Love Is Only A Feeling (2002 Version) [4:21]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman (2003 Clean Version) [2:47]
The Best Of Me [3:27]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Single Version) [3:39]
Out Of My Hands [3:29]
Makin Out [3:41]
Physical Sex [3:33]
How Dare You Call This Love [3:52]
Bareback [3:06]
CD3: LIVE 2003
LIVE AT KNEBWORTH 2003 (AUDIO)
Growing On Me [3:30]
The Best Of Me [3:09]
Makin’ Out [6:02]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [3:38]
Stuck In A Rut [5:57]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [5:12]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [10:17]
LIVE AT THE ASTORIA 2003 (AUDIO)
Black Shuck [3:45]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:14]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [4:31]
Friday Night [4:22]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [4:47]
Buffet [2:00]
CD4: LIVE AT WEMBLEY 2004
Grief Hammer [3:41]
Givin’ Up [3:38]
Stuck In A Rut [4:20]
Dinner Lady Arms [4:08]
Growing On Me [4:37]
Makin' Out [3:49]
Physical Sex [4:19]
Love Is Only A Feeling [5:21]
Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time [6:06]
Buffet [3:10]
Black Shuck [4:12]
Friday Night [3:04]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [4:03]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [5:10]
Love On The Rocks With No Ice [14:22]
Do They Know It's Christmas? [1:42]
Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End) [4:22]
DISC5: DVD
PROMO VIDEOS
I Believe In A Thing Called Love (2002 Version) [3:35]
Get Your Hands Off My Woman [2:59]
Growing On Me [4:26]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love [3:51]
Love Is Only A Feeling [4:30]
Friday Night [3:27]
Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End) [3:41]
DVD EXTRAS
History Of The Darkness - Warner Music UK EPK [19:53]
(DVD EXTRAS TBC)
Growing On Me - Outtakes [1:57]
Love Is Only A Feeling - Behind The Scenes [1:59]
Out Of My Hands (Audio Only) [3:30]
I Believe In A Thing Called Love - Behind The Scenes (music: Holding My Own) [2:00]
LIVE AT KNEBWORTH 2003 (VIDEO)
Growing On Me
The Best Of Me
Makin’ Out
Get Your Hands Off My Woman
Stuck In A Rut
I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Love On The Rocks With No Ice
LIVE AT THE ASTORIA 2003 (VIDEO)
Black Shuck
Growing On Me
Love Is Only A Feeling
Get Your Hands Off My Woman
Friday Night
I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Buffet
Giving Up
Love On The Rocks With No Ice
The first ever complete overview of Goth culture will be released in 2023.
Finally, after a decade of work, countless interviews and immersing himself into the culture, John Robb's definitive book is a journey far into The Art Of Darkness. The first in-depth book on Goth is a deep dive into the enduring culture and the social, historical and political backdrop that created the space for The Art Of Darkness to thrive.
680 pages with interviews with the likes of Andrew Eldritch, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, The Cult, The Banshees, The Damned, Einsturzende Neubauten, Danielle Dax, Johnny Marr, Trent Reznor, Adam Ant, Laibach, The Cure, Nick Cave and many others, this is a deepdive and walk on the dark side and into the very heartland of Goth.
Every generation has got to deal with the blues - embrace the melancholy. Find a beauty in the darkness, a poetry in sex and death...Whether it’s the Roman love of ghost stories, European macabre folk tales of the Middle Ages, Romantic poets, or the original Gothic tribes sacking the Eternal City, a walk on the dark side has always had its attractions. In the post-punk period, Generation Xerox saw music, clothes and culture come together to create one of the most enduring pop cultures of them all that still resonates to this day..
Goth.
It may have been a retrospective term for a scene that was already thriving, but its back story goes back millennia. The book starts with the fall of Rome and ends with Instagram and Tik Tok influencers, taking diversions through Lord Byron, European folk tales, Indian sadhus, Gothic architecture, Romantic poets, philosophers and idealists before coalescing through the dark end of the Sixties’ youthquake, and then blooming like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal in the post-punk period.
Defying the broken heartland of the post-industrial cities, the semi-forgotten satellite towns and the grim real politic of the Thatcher years, this was a post-punk culture full of dark dance and a death disco. The music soundtracked the style and a Stygian obsidian soundtrack fused the many fragments of culture that had been flirted with in the post-war pop narrative; a darker culture that began to coalesce around the holy trinity of the Doors, the Velvets and the Stooges in the late Sixties before flirting with glam rock, being amplified by punk, exploding as Goth, and then splintering into electronic dance music, industrial, psychobilly and new Goth, before finally filtering through dystopian Hollywood blockbusters, modern literature and throughout the modern world.
In the late Seventies, Goth culture emerged around a clutch of bands who found a new form of beauty in the apocalyptic foreboding, as a new youth tribe took glam rock from the catwalk to the cobbles and onto their own dance floors, creating their own art of darkness.
Finally, after a decade of work, countless interviews and immersing himself into the culture, John Robb's definitive book is a journey far into The Art Of Darkness. The first in-depth book on Goth is a deep dive into the enduring culture and the social, historical and political backdrop that created the space for The Art Of Darkness to thrive.
680 pages with interviews with the likes of Andrew Eldritch, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, The Cult, The Banshees, The Damned, Einsturzende Neubauten, Danielle Dax, Johnny Marr, Trent Reznor, Adam Ant, Laibach, The Cure, Nick Cave and many others, this is a deepdive and walk on the dark side and into the very heartland of Goth.
Every generation has got to deal with the blues - embrace the melancholy. Find a beauty in the darkness, a poetry in sex and death...Whether it’s the Roman love of ghost stories, European macabre folk tales of the Middle Ages, Romantic poets, or the original Gothic tribes sacking the Eternal City, a walk on the dark side has always had its attractions. In the post-punk period, Generation Xerox saw music, clothes and culture come together to create one of the most enduring pop cultures of them all that still resonates to this day..
Goth.
It may have been a retrospective term for a scene that was already thriving, but its back story goes back millennia. The book starts with the fall of Rome and ends with Instagram and Tik Tok influencers, taking diversions through Lord Byron, European folk tales, Indian sadhus, Gothic architecture, Romantic poets, philosophers and idealists before coalescing through the dark end of the Sixties’ youthquake, and then blooming like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal in the post-punk period.
Defying the broken heartland of the post-industrial cities, the semi-forgotten satellite towns and the grim real politic of the Thatcher years, this was a post-punk culture full of dark dance and a death disco. The music soundtracked the style and a Stygian obsidian soundtrack fused the many fragments of culture that had been flirted with in the post-war pop narrative; a darker culture that began to coalesce around the holy trinity of the Doors, the Velvets and the Stooges in the late Sixties before flirting with glam rock, being amplified by punk, exploding as Goth, and then splintering into electronic dance music, industrial, psychobilly and new Goth, before finally filtering through dystopian Hollywood blockbusters, modern literature and throughout the modern world.
In the late Seventies, Goth culture emerged around a clutch of bands who found a new form of beauty in the apocalyptic foreboding, as a new youth tribe took glam rock from the catwalk to the cobbles and onto their own dance floors, creating their own art of darkness.
Long-awaited follow-up to Weyes Blood’s 2019 breakthrough album Titanic Rising. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow was co-produced by Weyes Blood and Jonathan Rado, with engineering by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief), and additional instrumentation by Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Mary Lattimore.
Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019’s best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. “We’re in a fully functional shit show,” Mering says. “My heart is a glow stick that’s been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.” And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome “It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody,” a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. “I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up,” Mering says. “Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.” Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like “Grapevine” chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge “God Turn Me into a Flower” serves as allegory about our collective hubris. “The Worst Is Done” is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. “Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order,” she says. “These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment.”
Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019’s best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. “We’re in a fully functional shit show,” Mering says. “My heart is a glow stick that’s been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.” And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome “It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody,” a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. “I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up,” Mering says. “Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.” Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like “Grapevine” chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge “God Turn Me into a Flower” serves as allegory about our collective hubris. “The Worst Is Done” is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. “Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order,” she says. “These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment.”
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: The wonderful Weyes Blood returns for her most expansive and musically accomplished outing yet. Hazy, mid-century Americana meets smoky lounge bars and wistful folk music in a stunningly evocative and quintessentially Weyes Blood work. From strength to strength (including a stint as JOMF's bass player no less!), Mering pulls out all the stops for 'And In The Darkness', and it's come out a treat.TRACK LISTING
It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody
Children Of The Empire
Grapevine
God Turn Me Into A Flower
Hearts Aglow
And In The Darkness
Twin Flame
In Holy Flux
The Worst Is Done
A Given Thing
The album features music by Ivor Novello Awardwinning composer Bobby Krlic (The Haxan Cloak). The album is pressed on blue vinyl, with a deluxe spined sleeve with deboss artwork and the vinyl itself housed in its own double sided inner sleeve. Digital download card included. Bobby Krlic is an award-winning British artist, composer and music producer based in Los Angeles. Over the past decade, Krlic has created music under the The Haxan Cloak, releasing two critically acclaimed full-length albums (2011’s ‘The Haxan Cloak’ and 2013’s ‘Excavation’) and touring extensively as a solo artist building a devout fanbase. As a producer, Krlic has worked with artists including Björk, Khalid, Troye Sivan, Goldfrapp, serpentwithfeet, The Body and noise-rock band HEALTH. Krlic scored Ari Aster’s 2019 horror film ‘Midsommar’, earning him an Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score. Last year, he made new music for ‘Red Dead Online’ and also co-produced Father John Misty’s ‘To S.’ and ‘To R.’. An unflinching, gripping, turn-of-the-century murder mystery that traverses both New York’s wealthy elite and the struggling underbelly of the city’s ‘Gilded Age’, ‘The Alienist’ follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), a brilliant and obsessive ‘alienist’ in the controversial new field of treating mental pathologies.
TRACK LISTING
A1. Lying Inn Hospital
A2. Lucius & Byrnes In The Lab
A3. Hypnosis
A4. Osgood & Helen
A5. Fever Dream Dance
B1. Water Torture
B2. More Deaths
B3. Police Dead, Clara Gone
B4. Poor Marcus
B5. Angel Of Darkness
In the making of their new album Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies drew inspiration from mysteries both real and imagined: sea monsters, flocks of crows taking flight in extravagant formation, strange creatures dwelling in the mud near their new South London abode. With their mesmeric vocal presence and starkly poetic lyrics, singer/multi-instrumentalists Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies embed all that odd magic into songs that speak to the realities of modern times—isolation, insomnia, an overall unease with the state of the world—and ultimately uncover an unlikely sense of hope.
“Times of darkness are when people are often the most imaginative,” says Davies in reflecting on the album’s title. “It helps you to see all the wonders of the world you hadn’t noticed before—the things you’ve been blind to because you’ve been on autopilot for so long.”
Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Black Angels, The Shins), Darkness Brings The Wonders Home merges Smoke Fairies’ musings and meditations with a decidedly guitar-driven sound, the duo’s unearthly harmonies endlessly floating atop lead-heavy riffs. Over the course of a rigorous month-long session in Seattle, Smoke Fairies adopted a purposely intimate approach to achieving that singular sonic tone.
‘We spent a long time trying to fathom the direction we wanted to take on this album. At times the options seemed overwhelming, but as new songs started to form we realized we needed to take them back to our core sound – our interplaying guitar parts’ says Davies. “So then we had to really step up and do it ourselves, without relying on a band to fill anything in, which was quite a challenge—physically, mentally, everything.”
While Smoke Fairies initially intended to return to the earthy folk of early work like 2011’s Through Low Light and Trees, the duo soon found themselves assuming a new boldness in their guitar style and, in turn, pushing into much wilder terrain. In doing so, Blamire and Davies spent much of their time perusing the guitar shop near Ek’s chosen studio, experimenting with countless guitars and amps to augment the album’s sonic palette. “It was like being in a sweet shop, getting to try all these guitars we’d normally never be able to afford,” says Blamire. “We ended up making friends with guitars we never thought to use before, like this weird vintage Kay that sounded great but was so hard to play—to the point where there were days when our fingers were bleeding, or we had blisters in places you didn’t even know you could get them.”
Opening with “On the Wing,” Darkness Brings The Wonders Home quickly proves the power of matching that pummeling guitar work with Smoke Fairies’ finespun songwriting. With its woozy intensity and spellbinding rhythms, the song also introduces one of the album’s most prominent themes: the often-futile attempts at true connection at a time when the most impetuous behavior tends to prevail. “When we were little my brother wrote a poem about waking up and finding he’d changed into a swan overnight, with feathers growing out of his arms,” says Blamire of the song’s inspiration. “To me that’s an interesting metaphor for how people can grow into becoming quite flighty, where they’re never really able to settle in one place or with one person.”
An album deeply informed by aberrations of nature, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home delves into a different kind of fascination on “Out of the Woods”—a song sparked from Smoke Fairies’ study of the overgrown pond behind their house. “There’s something magical about all these weird things living out there in the mud,” says Blamire. “We started to project onto that, like the idea of something unexpected and good coming from the mud of your emotions.” Another song attuned to the fear of the unknown, the hypnotically ominous “Chew Your Bones” mines inspiration from the titular beast of Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent and from a local urban myth involving a character called The Croydon Cat Killer. “For years people thought someone was going around killing cats—they put a proper police force on it and everything, and then realized it’s just foxes,” Davies notes. “I’d also recently read an article about how some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of bringing kids into the world at the moment,” she adds, “We needed to write about the growing feeling that the world is on the verge of real change, there is the sense that there is this scary, unknown future lurking just beyond us ’.
Despite its many wanderings into otherworldly territory, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home remains rooted in real-life anxieties, particularly on tracks like the fluttering and urgent “Don’t You Want to Spiral Out of Control.” “The modern way of interacting around love seems too empty to me—it feels like it makes us into much colder people than we ever were before,” says Blamire. “It’s like we’re missing that spontaneity, the ability to bind together over something more than an image on a screen. That song came from wanting to just shake people and go, ‘don’t you want to spiral out of control again? Don’t you want to just let loose?’”
Throughout Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies adorn their observations with so many exquisite flourishes: the swinging melodies and elegant shredding of “Elevator,” the girl-group harmonies and spiky riffs of “Disconnect,” the delicate tension between taut guitar lines and swooning vocals on “Chocolate Rabbit.”
For Smoke Fairies, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home signals a strengthening of the inextricable bond they’ve forged through the years. “So many of the songs are about these feelings of disconnection, but the irony is that Jessica and I have each other, and that means so much more than any of the other relationships that come and go,” says Blamire. And because of that connection, the two found the courage essential for bringing such an emotionally trying album to life. “I think what we’re attempting to show is that, in all this chaos that’s so tumultuous and overwhelming, there are always ways to change your perspective,” says Blamire. “Making this album, we conquered so many worries and doubts and felt so much stronger at the end—we went right into the darkness, and somehow brought something incredibly positive out of it.”
“Times of darkness are when people are often the most imaginative,” says Davies in reflecting on the album’s title. “It helps you to see all the wonders of the world you hadn’t noticed before—the things you’ve been blind to because you’ve been on autopilot for so long.”
Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Black Angels, The Shins), Darkness Brings The Wonders Home merges Smoke Fairies’ musings and meditations with a decidedly guitar-driven sound, the duo’s unearthly harmonies endlessly floating atop lead-heavy riffs. Over the course of a rigorous month-long session in Seattle, Smoke Fairies adopted a purposely intimate approach to achieving that singular sonic tone.
‘We spent a long time trying to fathom the direction we wanted to take on this album. At times the options seemed overwhelming, but as new songs started to form we realized we needed to take them back to our core sound – our interplaying guitar parts’ says Davies. “So then we had to really step up and do it ourselves, without relying on a band to fill anything in, which was quite a challenge—physically, mentally, everything.”
While Smoke Fairies initially intended to return to the earthy folk of early work like 2011’s Through Low Light and Trees, the duo soon found themselves assuming a new boldness in their guitar style and, in turn, pushing into much wilder terrain. In doing so, Blamire and Davies spent much of their time perusing the guitar shop near Ek’s chosen studio, experimenting with countless guitars and amps to augment the album’s sonic palette. “It was like being in a sweet shop, getting to try all these guitars we’d normally never be able to afford,” says Blamire. “We ended up making friends with guitars we never thought to use before, like this weird vintage Kay that sounded great but was so hard to play—to the point where there were days when our fingers were bleeding, or we had blisters in places you didn’t even know you could get them.”
Opening with “On the Wing,” Darkness Brings The Wonders Home quickly proves the power of matching that pummeling guitar work with Smoke Fairies’ finespun songwriting. With its woozy intensity and spellbinding rhythms, the song also introduces one of the album’s most prominent themes: the often-futile attempts at true connection at a time when the most impetuous behavior tends to prevail. “When we were little my brother wrote a poem about waking up and finding he’d changed into a swan overnight, with feathers growing out of his arms,” says Blamire of the song’s inspiration. “To me that’s an interesting metaphor for how people can grow into becoming quite flighty, where they’re never really able to settle in one place or with one person.”
An album deeply informed by aberrations of nature, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home delves into a different kind of fascination on “Out of the Woods”—a song sparked from Smoke Fairies’ study of the overgrown pond behind their house. “There’s something magical about all these weird things living out there in the mud,” says Blamire. “We started to project onto that, like the idea of something unexpected and good coming from the mud of your emotions.” Another song attuned to the fear of the unknown, the hypnotically ominous “Chew Your Bones” mines inspiration from the titular beast of Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent and from a local urban myth involving a character called The Croydon Cat Killer. “For years people thought someone was going around killing cats—they put a proper police force on it and everything, and then realized it’s just foxes,” Davies notes. “I’d also recently read an article about how some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of bringing kids into the world at the moment,” she adds, “We needed to write about the growing feeling that the world is on the verge of real change, there is the sense that there is this scary, unknown future lurking just beyond us ’.
Despite its many wanderings into otherworldly territory, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home remains rooted in real-life anxieties, particularly on tracks like the fluttering and urgent “Don’t You Want to Spiral Out of Control.” “The modern way of interacting around love seems too empty to me—it feels like it makes us into much colder people than we ever were before,” says Blamire. “It’s like we’re missing that spontaneity, the ability to bind together over something more than an image on a screen. That song came from wanting to just shake people and go, ‘don’t you want to spiral out of control again? Don’t you want to just let loose?’”
Throughout Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies adorn their observations with so many exquisite flourishes: the swinging melodies and elegant shredding of “Elevator,” the girl-group harmonies and spiky riffs of “Disconnect,” the delicate tension between taut guitar lines and swooning vocals on “Chocolate Rabbit.”
For Smoke Fairies, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home signals a strengthening of the inextricable bond they’ve forged through the years. “So many of the songs are about these feelings of disconnection, but the irony is that Jessica and I have each other, and that means so much more than any of the other relationships that come and go,” says Blamire. And because of that connection, the two found the courage essential for bringing such an emotionally trying album to life. “I think what we’re attempting to show is that, in all this chaos that’s so tumultuous and overwhelming, there are always ways to change your perspective,” says Blamire. “Making this album, we conquered so many worries and doubts and felt so much stronger at the end—we went right into the darkness, and somehow brought something incredibly positive out of it.”
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Smoke Fairies follow up 2015's 'Wild Winter' with this chunky, grunge-tinged opus. Swimming guitars and those unmistakable vocals soar over a groove-led background, showing influence from both gothic rock and 70's progressive, 'Darkness Brings The Wonders Home' does exactly that, and with aplomb.TRACK LISTING
1. On The Wing
2. Elevator
3. Disconnect
4. Coffee Shop Blues
5. Left To Roll
6. Out Of The Woods
7. Chocolate Rabbit
8. Chew Your Bones
9. Don't You Want To Spiral Out Of Control?
10. Super Tremolo
Some rank this 1978 album as Bruce Springsteen's very best (well a recent poll in The Telegraph did!) and it does hit really hard: with tunes (every one's a winner) sound (powerful, dense Rock with some skyscraping guitar solos) and ofcourse, with words. Here Bruce's characters are blue collar dreamers, down but defiantly not out. It's like a Raymond Carver short story set to music. The record was a huge triumph after a court case (musical) enforced a 3 year hiatus which was unheard of in the 70's. This was after his breakthrough album, Born To Run, so maybe a frustrated and even angry Boss poured all of his energy into making this record the beast that is. Anyway, it's an incredible piece of art. A must-have classic rock LP!
STAFF COMMENTS
Andy says: A stunning document of blue-collar America full of hard times but most importantly: dreams. This is newly remastered from the original analogue tapes.
Goblin's genius lies in skilfully combining elements of progressive psychedelia with jazz-rock, Eastern European folk music and the Baroque. Their music often displays an eerie fairy tale quality that underscores tensions within a film to great effect.
If Bella Casa's 2012 box set, 'The Awakening' (CASA12BOX) documented Goblin's formative years, this edition comprises selections from ten films scored by the group across a twenty-five year period from 1977, culminating in Non Ho Sonno the Argento thriller for which this remarkable aggregation reformed to help create.
If Bella Casa's 2012 box set, 'The Awakening' (CASA12BOX) documented Goblin's formative years, this edition comprises selections from ten films scored by the group across a twenty-five year period from 1977, culminating in Non Ho Sonno the Argento thriller for which this remarkable aggregation reformed to help create.
Do you have to be Swedish to cast such deep melancholy in music so accurately and so beautifully? The one-man project The Grand Opening by the Stockholm multi-instrumentalist John Roger Olsson proves impressively on his fourth album that he is rightly counted among the finest representatives of this art. Being mentioned directly alongside American Music Club, Talk Talk, Red House Painters and The Blue Nile - as happens in the British music press - is certainly flattering. The recordings for the album began in 2012 with sessions featuring a rotating cast, but the search for the right direction was difficult. Finally, John Roger Olsson locked himself up in his new studio in Stockholm and, inspired by ideas and chords that had occupied him for a long time, recorded the album in four days.
2nd single from ‘Deerhoof vs. Evil’ available on 7” vinyl picture disc limited to 500 copies.
The b-side features two live tracks from the album ‘Milk Man’ performed at The Flaming Lips curated ATP I in New York in 2009, ‘Giga Dance’ and ‘Milking’, the latter featuring Kliph Scurlock of The Flaming Lips.
“Deep dub FX launch Behold A Marvel In The Darkness into ionospheric orbit” - UNCUT
“...you’ll keep returning to Vs Evil for it’s winningly alien hooks, it’s pop moments: the gossamer delight of Behold A Marvel In The Darkness (with Matsuzaki’s starkly affecting chorus of, “What is this thing called love?”)…” – MOJO
?Having formed in 1994, Deerhoof is now that fateful age and by rites it's the band's turn to go out and challenge the world. The same way a rebellious adolescent turns tough and irrational, Greg Saunier, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Satomi Matsuzaki just up and split from San Francisco, the only home they've ever known as a band, and left behind all notions of what a "Deerhoof record sounds like."
The result is 'Deerhoof vs. Evil' (the band’s 11th album!). The musical equivalent of hormones raging out of control, it explodes out of the speakers with its gawky triumph and inflamed sentimentality. These are songs thatpractically demand that you dance and sing along (however elastic the rhythms, or abrupt the melodies). Right from “Qui Dorm, Només Somia” (sung in Catalan), it's evident that Deerhoof aren't afraid to take chances (critics be damned).?Ironically the result is polished, blissfully exuberant, and huge-sounding. Going DIY meant freedom to reinvent themselves, playing each others' instruments, altering those instruments so drastically as to be unrecognisable, (those aren't Joanna Newsom or Konono No. 1 samples, those are John and Ed's guitars), and generally splashing their sonic colours into the most unexpected combinations.
The b-side features two live tracks from the album ‘Milk Man’ performed at The Flaming Lips curated ATP I in New York in 2009, ‘Giga Dance’ and ‘Milking’, the latter featuring Kliph Scurlock of The Flaming Lips.
“Deep dub FX launch Behold A Marvel In The Darkness into ionospheric orbit” - UNCUT
“...you’ll keep returning to Vs Evil for it’s winningly alien hooks, it’s pop moments: the gossamer delight of Behold A Marvel In The Darkness (with Matsuzaki’s starkly affecting chorus of, “What is this thing called love?”)…” – MOJO
?Having formed in 1994, Deerhoof is now that fateful age and by rites it's the band's turn to go out and challenge the world. The same way a rebellious adolescent turns tough and irrational, Greg Saunier, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Satomi Matsuzaki just up and split from San Francisco, the only home they've ever known as a band, and left behind all notions of what a "Deerhoof record sounds like."
The result is 'Deerhoof vs. Evil' (the band’s 11th album!). The musical equivalent of hormones raging out of control, it explodes out of the speakers with its gawky triumph and inflamed sentimentality. These are songs thatpractically demand that you dance and sing along (however elastic the rhythms, or abrupt the melodies). Right from “Qui Dorm, Només Somia” (sung in Catalan), it's evident that Deerhoof aren't afraid to take chances (critics be damned).?Ironically the result is polished, blissfully exuberant, and huge-sounding. Going DIY meant freedom to reinvent themselves, playing each others' instruments, altering those instruments so drastically as to be unrecognisable, (those aren't Joanna Newsom or Konono No. 1 samples, those are John and Ed's guitars), and generally splashing their sonic colours into the most unexpected combinations.