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 Tom Randall

Song of the Day (guest editor) – 1: Those Darlins

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those darlins - screws get loose

by Tom Randall

So: there’s Cults, with their skeletal arrangements, double-tracked and reverbed into a glistening artefact. In my mind’s eye they are a frigid blue, a cryogenic glow bathing the lost sounds immaculately revived by teched-up modern fetishists.

Those Darlins, on the other hand, would be … dirt-red? Exhaust-stain yellow?

This is the first single (and title track) from their new album, available for an email address here if you’d care. I hear boozy female voices singing loosely in unison. I hear a drawl, gleefully accentuated. Ah, the demented hillbilly girl-group – a new spin on this well-trodden revival. The store where I bought the record called it “Redneck Ramones”. Like that Misfits’ T-shirt wearing hill-people family band I saw in the foot-mall in Tamworth during the country music festival (who I suspect would consider their favourite Hank Williams to be 3.

The first eight consecutive times I listen to this, the only word that comes to mind is “sunshine”, the brilliance of the vocals dazzling and distracting from the dirt underneath. But the grit is there, and when you notice it, it’s on your skin, in your teeth, and coating your tongue. And as you start to choke on it, you crave its taste all the more.

Place this blazing new hue next to Cults’ lethal, ruthless frost. Both deserve your time.

PS: the best eight bar guitar solo since ‘In Bloom’ (actually it’s 13 bars, but it’s the first eight that really do it for me).

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