BIO – 2013
“What does this record sound like?” ponders Darwin Deez, when asked to describe his second album, “Songs for Imaginative People”. “Well, I’m gonna tell you, but you have to listen closely…”
It would have been easy – all too easy – to think you had Darwin Deez figured out. He’s the irrepressible pop auteur who rose swiftly from performing at open mic nights during New York’s “anti-folk” scene to playing raucously received shows at SXSW and CMJ. The guy who broke into spontaneous, synchronized dances on stage, be it at music festivals around the world or his own sold out headline shows. The mischievous musical sprite who wrote songs that were as infectious as they were offbeat, songs like “Constellations” and “Radar Detector” which became bona fide hits and lodged themselves in the brains for days. He’s the one who brought some much needed verve and colour to the dreary indie landscape and became one of our most off-kilter and much-loved popstars with his self-titled debut LP, released in 2010. But scratch a little deeper beneath the surface and you would have found more depth and melancholy than quirky first appearances might necessarily have suggested, and a sonic ambition which reached far beyond merely writing solid gold anthems in waiting.
The first seeds for Darwin branching out were sown last year, when he put his “Wonky Beats” mixtape online. Making a sharp detour from the pristine melodies of his eponymous debut, Darwin traded compelling and intricately rhythmic rhymes with friends like Dev Hynes, Das Racist and Chiddy Bang to create a full-length rap mixtape built entirely from samples from the 1971 surrealist children’s classic “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.
Now, in another bold, idiosyncratic move, comes the sophomore album “Songs For Imaginative People”, or, as Darwin himself puts it, “the antidote to all the bippety boppity boo of the first album”. Not that it doesn’t come bursting with the same density of hummable tunes and mind-bending lyricism, but this time around, the scope is wider, the ideas more ingenious and abundant, the finished product revealing new textures and layers of sonic and lyrical genius upon each repeat listen. Whereas Darwin’s debut deliberately restricted himself to rhythm guitar, bass and electronic drums, here Darwin is going widescreen, amping up production values and exploring new avenues, such as his newfound love for guitar shredding. (“People like Hendrix, Thin Lizzy – these are the guitarists I fell in love with while making the record”, he says). Classic writing, sonic experimentalism, rhythm, and blues inform his palette of sounds, with the perfect balance of virtuosity and simplicity, not afraid to blend more extreme noise terror with layers of cushioning harmonies to echo the emotional quality of human experience.
To make the album, Darwin relocated from the chaotic hustle and flow of New York City to Asheville in his home State of North Carolina, so that he could work and record free of distractions. To say the album was influenced by this change of scenery would be a mistake however. More-so than on the first album, Darwin insists that this record is more personal than ever. “I made it all myself”, he says, “so everything you’re hearing is the sound of one man’s idiocy and grandeur and pettiness and mawkishness and sadness and pride and joy…but overwhelmingly it sounds like me. Which is crazy because it’s a lot different from the last record except for my voice, tonally and poetically. So if you liked my last record, get to know me a little better on this record. And if you don’t know, now you know”.
The resulting album is the most fascinating and thrilling record you’ll hear next year, as Darwin flexes his muscles and moves into unashamedly uncharted territory. It’s there lyrically, as he explores his solidarity with existentialism (on first single “Free (The Editorial Me”)), and, uses the schizoid blast of “(800) HUMAN” as a “prayer for deliverance from the existential inauthenticity of laziness and submission”. His penchant for irresistible melodies is present and correct too, as in “You Can’t Be My Girl”, which is, in essence, a glorious paean to a damaged, and impossible, relationship “you’re sweet but you’re messed up/ your best friend is a red cup”. Whilst, equally anthemic, “Redshift” cleverly uses big-bang metaphor to poignantly dissect the pain of break-up, “Was there a big bang that I just missed? Did an explosion cause a redshift? ‘cos you’re moving away from me, what did I do? The Universe is just an empty space without you”. This is a record so obviously connected with the artist’s life, a record any soul can feel on every level. Witness also “Chelsea’s Hotel”, where rhyming couplets representing the romantic polarity of pursuit pinch the skin akin to stretching the sonnets of John Donne: “I’m not leaving, this is just the place, I’ve been homeless since the dimples on her simple face. And I’ve spent my fortune, I’ve torn the town apart, to build a hotel on her heart”.
At heart however, Darwin insists he’s writing pop songs. “I’ve been practicing (for 17 years – since age 11) so I think I know what you like by now. Well, as songwriters, we all know what you like, it’s just that some of us are still new to the magic of it all and so we get lost in the effortless fulfillment of creation itself and easily forget about editing and rewriting and the audience. Well, I’m giving you a no-magic-distraction guarantee. This is music that I made for a certain kind of people to enjoy. Hence the album title. This wasn’t a demon exorcism and it’s not going to bring you down”.
We’re just scratching the surface. Ultimately, as for what it sounds like exactly, let’s leave it to Darwin himself to have the final say: “I’ve been making music all my life and this is the best music I’ve ever made”.
BIO – 2010/2011/2012
Some of our finest musicians, the ones most capable of commanding attention onstage or blaring through the speakers of a radio, can often seem aloof and reclusive in real life. They can sometimes seem like total polar opposites to their public demeanour, or, unfortunately, in some instances, they can sometimes be downright disappointing (too many to name). And then there are the true pop stars among us; the ones blessed with rare, innate qualities, who shine just as vibrantly offstage as on, who have the genetic good fortune to be able to write whip-smart, life- affirming, heart-swelling songs, and at the same time say all sorts of funny and clever and entertaining things, and without whom the cultural landscape would be that much greyer and duller. No one illustrates this distinction more so than young Darwin Deez.
Whether expounding on the virtues of open mic nights in Manhattan and Brooklyn, writing about the hair-care routine for his magnificent ‘fro (hot water and drip dry, for the record) or praising the guitar sounds of (yes!) Jimmy Eat World, Deez simply can’t help but be utterly enthralling. His songs – delightfully twisted, gorgeously off kilter slices of perfect pop meanwhile, are naturally nothing less than absolutely captivating too, sort of like Arthur Russell if someone spiked his drinks with happy pills.
And much like the best pop stars, Deez started young. Born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to parents who were avid Meher Baba disciples, the first chapter of Deez’s musical career began when he was given a guitar for this 11th birthday. “It was a cream Fender Strat which I actually still use”, he recalls. “My dad taught me some chords and I started writing songs straight away, writing the lyrics on these real small 3×5 cards”. Listening to a diet of Weezer, Nirvana and Nada Surf – “stuff that was mass marketed in 1996” – Deez started a band at the ripe old age of 12 with a friend called Black Moon. “The lyrics and chords were quite simple and predictable. It was just kind of an imitation of what we thought was poetry”. He received healthy encouragement from his parents to boot however, with family friends even recommending cool records to buy for Deez. “Yeah, like Superchunk, Fugazi and Archers of Loaf. That was pretty amazing”.
A year later however, Deez heard a Chemical Brothers song and fell out of love with indie rock, albeit temporarily, throwing his lot in instead with electronic music: he even saved up his money to buy drum machines and samplers and began to experiment with making drum and bass himself. “I heard my first Chemical Brothers song and thought, “This is the music of the future”’” he says now. In a strange twist of fate, it wasn’t until he was about 18 years old when a cousin pulled him back from the brink by playing him, of all things, bombastic Emo merchants Jimmy Eat World’s “Your New Aesthetic” on a pre-iPod mp3 player, that he swung 180 degrees and ended up firmly in the rock camp once again. “There was such a rich guitar sound, that made me realise what I had been missing out on”, he laughs. “Actually, when I left high school and went to Wesleyan I tried to start my own band, and our goal was to emulate Q and not U and 90 Day Men, whose first albums are two of my favourite ever. Our one practice was rife with potential, but there were too many busy schedules. Our name was Miso Cardigan”.
Ah yes, Wesleyan University, Deez’s personal bête noire. Even though the college is now synonymous with the burgeoning AmazingBoyChairMGMTViolensCrisis music nexus in Brooklyn, upon leaving his native Carolina and entering its hallowed halls at 18, Deez found himself, for the first time, cast adrift, lonely and in “a really dark place. It was many things; it was being away from home for the first time, and it was not having much in common with anyone there. I thought I was going to meet people who I was going to be friends with for the rest of my life, and it wasn’t like that at all. I guess I just didn’t choose the right environment for myself.”
The “right environment” however, turned out to be in New York City. There, Deez started to become a fixture on Monday nights at the Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village, billed as “the legendary stomping ground for NYC’s Anti-folk scene”. Hailed for producing anti-folk luminaries such as Regina Spektor, Adam Green and countless others, Deez felt like he had finally found his niche. “It was the real hub of the action for me, and it was exciting to be there because most nights the audiences were so attentive, and so into it, even the first bands on. I became inspired to write better lyrics by studying the other songwriter-performers there”.Galvanised and rejuvenated by this new scene – Deez was even asked to join Creaky Boards by its founder, Andrew Hoepfner – Deez got himself some Casio keyboards and wrote a “lo-fi pop song”. That song turned out to be “Deep Sea Divers”, and it ended up being the first of a whole new batch of songs; the first, Deez says, “where I used my own voice since I was 13. That’s when I felt like I had found something”.
A lilting, shimmering gem of a pop song, gently witty but streaked with dashes of melancholy, “Deep Sea Divers” encapsulates exactly what makes Darwin Deez stand out so effortlessly from the rest of the pack. In roughly three minutes he manages to cram in gloriously addictive melodies, deliciously off-kilter wordplay about a crumbling relationship (“little yellow fish are happy, it’s not so tough/ would everything you wish you had be good enough?”) and his beautifully rough around the edges croon to create an instant classic, at once deeply infectious yet also undeniably affecting. By now you would probably have heard his (long since sold out) debut single “Constellations”, complete with handclaps and his opening crib of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”, but, come April 12, when his debut, self-titled album drops, there will be many, many more songs to treasure, from the brightly scrubbed anthem in waiting “Radar Detector”, to the barbed riposte “Bad Day” (sample lyric: “I hope that the last page of your 800 page novel is missing”) to the plaintive, lovelorn croon of “The Bomb Song”, all of which he wrote and recorded entirely on his own, in his apartment, on one mike on his PC.
Another thing to look forward to in 2010? Deez’s live shows, extravaganzas of unbridled energy and unfettered joy, each and every one of them, with him being known to break into spontaneous bouts of synchronised dancing mid-song (an extension of which can be seen in his widely circulated viral Youtube video, “The Spring Dance”). “Well, I love to dance”, Deez laughs. “Michelle, my bandmate is a tap dancer, and I’m secretly pretty good at it as well, so we take it up another notch onstage. But when we play live, the bottom-line is, we want all the people outside the room to come in, and we want the people inside the room to really enjoy themselves. I want people to get into it the way audiences at the Sidewalk Cafe got into shows, people would tell jokes onstage, and if you told them to clap, they’d clap”.
Like we said, Darwin Deez is a true original. He talks about his songs being “a little bit “Thriller”, a bit Dismemberment Plan”. He gets as excited about new bands like Everything Everything as he does about the new John Mayer album (although he confesses that it was “not really for me”). And he laughs off any spurious vocal comparisons to Julian Casablancas, saying “I love the Strokes, and I get the similarity, but he draaaaaaaaaws his words out”. He is a singularly brilliant, hilarious, complex, entertaining individual, and writes songs that will make you want to bust out your dancing shoes while also touching that raw, emotional nerve in your body. He is everything a pop star should be and so rarely is. Embrace him now, before everyone else does…
