Event

Darlingside

Darlingside delivers a truly moving blend of subtlety, power, outstanding vocal quality and contemporary songwriting. The Boston-based quartet features four distinct voices clustered around a single microphone; their tightly-arranged tunes drawing from the unexpected, including strains of bluegrass, classical, and even barbershop. Accompanied by an arsenal of classical strings, guitars, mandolin, and percussion, these four close friends swap instruments from song to song and offer a sound that defies standard genre classifications. While the band's critically acclaimed 2015 release "Birds Say" was steeped in nostalgia and the conviction of youth, their new album Extralife" grapples with dystopian realities and uncertain futures. Whether ambling down a sidewalk during the apocalypse or getting stuck in a video game for eternity, the band asks, sometimes cynically, sometimes playfully: what comes next? Hope arrives in the form of Darlingside's signature superpower harmonies, drawing frequent comparisons to late-60s era groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Byrds. And yet, their penchant for science fiction and speculative futurism counteracts any urge to pigeonhole their aesthetic as retro. The four close friends construct every piece of their music collaboratively, pooling musical and lyrical ideas so that each song bears the imprint of four different writing voices. NPR Music dubs the result "exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop" and calls Extralife "perfectly crafted. With a sound nodding to the music of their parents generation, Darlingside has established a sound that is all their own.