Dark Dark Dark - Wild Go

Dark Dark Dark are a gang of musicians from Minneapolis, USA, playing quite a surreal sounding type of folk, heavily inspired by New Orleans jazz, with the kind of tempo traditional funeral walks have, sounding a bit like music I've heard from Transylvanian jazz musician Micheal Kretu at times. The sharp penetrating sound of Nona Marie Invie's voice cuts through ethereal harmonies from the guys among sprinklings of banjo, clarinet, classical piano, and lots of violin and accordion, which nicely step in where you'd imagine guitar parts would be.

Their second album starts with 'In Your Dreams', which has an upbeat Eastern European trad-folk feel with barber-shop style male vocal harmonies. The album has a decent lengh to each of the songs, and a good ratio of upbeat to mellow for the first half through songs like 'Daydreaming', a paino-led piece, and 'Heavy Heart' with violin and more vocal harmonies. 'Celebrate' is strong on the accordion again, and the tempo seems like it is a birthday song, very similar to first track. The long, drawn notes and vocal melody on 'Nobody Knows' is nicely off-set by the low thump of a drum, bringing in the funeral march feel.

After this the songs seem to get a little similar, dwindling into depression, losing interest and momentum, as on the sparse and eerie 'Robert' and slightly drab 'Say the Word'. The title track is the most morbid thing I've heard in a while. They're broken up by 'Right Path', but Marshall LaCount's vocal just doesn't cut it as much as Invie's, and brings the nice bouncy song down a bit.

Maybe some better arrangement of the album would have stopped boredom settng in, mixing up the lighter sounding songs with the sombre, chanting pieces, which is a shame as the first half of the album has a nice balance. The build up of backing vocals - "ooh ooh' etcetera - in a haunting and non-Spectre way increases tension in places, and the sparse use of instruments allows you to hear proper musicianship.

Don't listen to Wild Go on a day when you need cheering up. You'd have to be in a relatively well-balanced mood to take this one on the chin.