Tag: Dear Darkness

PLAYING DETROIT: Dear Darkness Slays on Latest EP

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Dear Darkness photo by Elise Mesner

Stacey MacLeod and Samantha Linn are distressed to impress, sharing their wonderfully warped worldview as as post-punk kitsch queens Dear Darkness on their latest EP She’s That Kind of Person, but I Like Her Anyway.

Released last month, their latest effort doesn’t stray far from 2016’s Get it Here EP. Faithful to their unhinged brand of glitter and grime this sonic adventure is less bashful bedroom eyes and more spontaneous arson speckled with deep throat kissing. Tongue between teeth rather than tongue-in-cheek, Dear Darkness revisits their affinity for braiding danger with crossed-legs innocence.

This time around, the girls turned up the fuzz with additional layers of synths and even more reckless percussive outbursts; taken together, their sound feels like a perfectly orchestrated tantrum. “Birthday Party” is a pouty psych-punk update to Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party” and “You Had it Comin” could easily soundtrack a David Lynch revenge montage sequence. “Let’s Blow up the Moon” which is, well, about blowing up the moon, is so heavily distorted that you would think they were playing on the moon, loud enough for us to hear back on planet earth but warped by outer space. It’s peppered with enough blood-curdling screams to wake Hitchcock from the dead. Cohesive even in their chaos, Dear Darkness proves once again that you’ve gotta have a light to go on living in the shadows.

Bat your lashes and take names with the latest from Detroit punk princesses Dear Darkness below:

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PLAYING DETROIT: Dear Darkness “Get it Here” EP

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Photo by Chantal Elise as part of the “In the Band: Michigan Music Behind a Feminist Lens.” For more of her work, head to www.chantalelise.com.

If Siouxsie Sioux and the cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch shared a seedy punk venue greenroom where they exchanged Bowie impressions and candy necklace bites, you might have a slight grasp on what Dear Darkness sounds like. Self-described as somewhere between “kitsch and oblivion,” Detroit drama queens Stacey MacLeod and Samantha Linn released their latest pleasantly demented and perfectly untamed EP Get it Here earlier this week. This perplexing polyamorous marriage of grit, grime, glitter and gorgeously unique explorations of voice (both internal and external) revel in a self-made turbulence much like a wave pool in a motel bathtub.

Don’t mistaken aforementioned “kitsch” as a dismissal of sincerity. Although riotously playful, Get it Here provokes a teeth grinding, guttural exorcism that just happens to be covered in frosting and sprinkles. Lyrically, the EP kicks and screams but not without cracks where a beautifully strange vulnerability pushes through. The swollen, voice breaking delivery of the lyrics: “Why don’t you notice me? I’m right here” from the track “You Ain’t Tried it With Me” encompasses the tug-of-war vibe of the entire collection. The drums are scathing, the guitar restless. and the warbled and tortured ferocity of MacLeod and Linn’s harmonizing fuse to redefine punk, pop and human fragility in one fell swoop. Yes, the EP is shockingly consistent but that observation seems to belittle the entirety of what Dear Darkness is attempting to do here. More than consistency, what they’ve managed to do in five songs and under 18 minutes is, above all else, really fucking special.

Indulge in Dear Darkness’s rare breed of strange on “Get it Here” below:

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