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Local Guides
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The Darcys
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by Bill Adams
January 3rd - 9th, 2008 |
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It's funny how life works out, it's all just a matter of timing;
strangers that pass in an alley on their way in opposite directions,
for example, may end up the best of friends, lovers or not even
notice each other if they happen to be looking the wrong way or,
in the case of a band like The Darcys, four guys with similar
musical interests may live within blocks of each other for most of
their lives, but not have the opportunity to play together until they
leave home and go to the same place by happenstance.
“We all went to a small part of Dalhousie in Halifax called
King’s College and met through a super obscure philosophy
program that we all took,” explains guitarist Kirby Best of The
Darcys’ remarkable twist of fate. “Jason [Couse] and Wes
[Marskell] – who are our drummer and lead guitar player
respectively – were childhood friends and had been playing
together since they both started to learn and they'd tried a few
things but it hadn't really gone anywhere. They met Dave [Hurlow]
though, who plays bass, and he overheard me talking in the
library about this band – I was kind of a sideman - that wasn't
really going the way I thought it should.
“He heard in that conversation too that I had been writing
songs and he told Wes and Jason. There was this big Halloween
party at the bar that we all happened to be at later on and they
took the opportunity to introduce themselves. We hit it off and
the next day we had band practice.
“It's just funny to us that we're all from Toronto and
Etobicoke; we just happened to meet out in Halifax.”
That was two years ago and, since then, the band's fortunes
have only improved as they've continually converted more fans
with each successive show and recently had the opportunity to
record their debut full–length, Endless Water. The album,
recorded after hours at Kitchener-Waterloo's own Children’s
Museum last summer, is a fine, icy slab of shoegazing pop
boasting a mercurial quality that's remarkably enticing;
instrumental parts materialize and vanish as songs like “A Series
Of Prayers”, “Where Are Your Daughters?” and the title track float
methodically along on tides of chorus and echo effects directly
into the pleasure centre any listener's brain. According to Kirby,
getting out of the GTA was exactly what the band needed too;
without many distractions from family or friends, the band was
able to pull really long hours in order to make sure that
everything about Endless Water was as they wanted. “We did two
weeks in the Children’s Museum working after hours while it was
closed,” explains the guitarist of their surrealist surroundings
during recording “A friend of ours is going to school at Ryerson
and he made our CD his final project for the year so he brought
his Pro Tools rig up. We did a bit of stuff with kids, it became sort
of a ‘making of’ exhibit during the day and then, when the
museum closed at five, we’d work on the record and then we'd go
until sunrise. We ended up sleeping a couple of nights in the
museum.
“We wanted to get out of town to record the album so we
could concentrate on what we were doing and it was really
appealing to work both for the amount of time we did and in the
very large room we had,” continues Best. “We got a lot of really
fun stuff that we thought would be great to try – like placing
microphones 30 feet away from amps and the drum kit to get
bigger sounds – that we wouldn't have been able to get
otherwise.”
Full–length touring plans to support Endless Water have been
put on hold while a couple of the band's members finish their
studies at King’s College, but in the meantime the band has
elected to do short bursts of shows and one–offs both to keep
themselves sharp and to keep their fanbase growing. According to
Best, whose dayjob is as a copyrighter at the Canadian Copyright
Agency, he's been absolutely floored by the band’s reception thus
far; every musician says they can't believe how lucky they are, but
when so much material crosses your desk at work, it’s difficult for
the guitarist to believe that any indie band without any sort of
backing could have an impact which makes the band's initial
success very gratifying. “I always have a hard time believing that
people like it that much, but they keep coming back,” laughs Best
self–depricatingly. “I go through about 500 songs a day and it's
just scary to me when I realize how many albums get released
every year, and then I come home and I try to write songs
wondering if what we're doing is that much different from all the
other stuff that's coming out. We just put it out of our heads as
much as possible; we have fun together, we have fun
experimenting in the studio, and that’s what we have to
concentrate on and whatever happens after that, if people get into
it and like it, is out of our hands.
“Half the battle is being able to take whatever comes – be it
luck or talent or whatever – but in order to get anything, you have
to be willing to get out there and try. That's the feel–good moral
at the end.”
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