July 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
|
newsarchive
|
|
July 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
|
| • back to July 2003 index |
|
|
Diana Darby's second album redefines intimacy 30 July 2003
Houston-born, Nashville-based Diana Darby whispers the truthful, existential songs on her second album Fantasia Ball as though reading to herself from her diary, very late at night, in her dimly lit bedroom. It’s just unadorned and fragile voice and guitar captured to cassette tape, along with the most sparing embellishment from other instruments, that paint these gripping, gorgeous emotiscapes. Lo fi? Uh huh. You’ll find refrigerator hum, odd buzzes, an ambulance siren, her dog barking, and plenty of tape hiss on this disc. This is good. Wrapping such music in a pretty, tidy sonic package would have been like putting crunchy, bright candy coating around salmon sushi. Darby’s lyrics, like the poetry on her website, are a study in intimate minimalism. Take her song Summer: Summer, Summer’s comin’Or the even softer and slower Happy: You say you want me to be happyDarby and her musical partners Mark Linn, JZ Barrell, and David Henry have done the right thing by putting nothing between you and her voice but a cassette recorder—as Darby put nothing between her internal world and her expression of these songs. Now, songs so simple and delicate work only if they express a universal truth. And this woman’s damn well tapped into that, no mistake. There’s a lot of emptiness and darkness in Fantasia Ball’s quiet, beautiful tracks—reflecting the Buddhist notion that you cannot connect with life without embracing its absence. For every artist there’s a line between what a song means to them and the version they offer to the world. Intimate singer/songwriters let you closer. Darby, in an act of courage or perhaps because she just never learned about that boundary, invites you to come over and sit down right beside her, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, on her side of that line. | Diana Darby | | Delmore Recordings | | Interview on Suicide Girls | | CD from Amazon.com | | top of page | |
| back to July 2003 index |
|
|
click for Rockbites Home
|
|
|
Copyright © 1998 - 2001 M. Jason. All Rights Reserved. Rockbites is not for profit and supports human rights. “Rockbites” and “Alternative Daily” are service marks of Rockbites. All names are the property of their respective owners. Send your feedback or questions to feedback@rockbites.org Send your press releases to press@rockbites.org Rockbites Alternative Daily contact information |
|
