The Pendulum Swings is the first new album from Deardarkhead in 10 years, since the bands last album Strange Weather, the Press release claims it is 25 years since they put an album out, but I have my review copy of Strange Weather here and that press release makes clear it was all new music. They originally formed in 1988 in Atlantic City, when the bands singer left them in 2009 they decided to continue as an instrumental indie act. They went back to record the album at Miner Street recordings in Philadelphia where they produced Strange Weather. This album was produced, mixed and engineered by Brian McTear and Amy Morrisey and mastered by Joe McTear. Deardarkhead are Kevin Harrington, Robert Weiss, Brandon Howard and special guest Joe McGinty.
The album opens with Flamethrower that starts quite sparsely and then explodes like the flames are literally shooting out of the speakers and this intense instrumental keeps that bands post punk sound. Coming Undone is a feeling many of us have in the 2020's more like the world's Coming Undone and searing guitar lines and precision drumming are the right soundtrack tour current travails.
Tomorrowland is a rather more hopeful sounding tune, a bit Psychedelic Furs meets Love Tractor sounding like it would work on the dancefloor of a good alternative club. Tears is a touch slower and more reflective, built around a guitar figure that trickles down, like tears slowly falling from your eyes. In places this soars like you are finally feeling better, before it goes downhill again.
Sad Songs (And Better Days) has some cool jangling guitars and percussion that shines through the sadness of our times. The guitars build in intensity and fly off in places like they are raging with anger at what they see.
Letting Go feels like they have turned a New Order electronic tune into an instrumental guitar romp, making it work damn well, through all the rising and falling peaks and troughs this seems to signal. A Thanksgiving has crystalline guitars and almost marching band drumming evoking feelings of A Thanksgiving celebration of some sort.
Black Pearls seems to be suitably beautiful, riding the waves in search of a locker or two, the drums seem to mark the times of the watches, guitars exploring the depths. In Another Life this would be the backdrop to the discovery of something amazing at the end of a film, with the main characters slowly walking off screen into the distance.
The album closes with The Pendulum Swings that thankfully doesn't remind me of the band Pendulum, this is slow building, like much of Strange Weather it reminds me of Atlases, in how it evokes a whole vista of imagery quite effortlessly.
Find out more at https://deardarkhead.bandcamp.com/album/the-pendulum-swings https://www.facebook.com/darkheads https://www.deardarkhead.com/
