Feel the Darkess
Darker My Love was born when two longtime friends, Andy Granelli (The Distillers) and Tim Presley (Nerve Agents), decided to take a break from their successful punk bands to venture into overdriven rock. Rounding out their lineup are Jared Everett on guitar and Rob Barbato handling bass and sharing vocal duties with Presley. Fans of Granelli and Presley’s previous punk ventures won’t find any of that energy carried over here. Dreamy layers of reverb, rocking guitar riffs and echoing vocals that drift above the songs like clouds mark this as a complete departure from their prior efforts. And they pull it all off with a level of skill that betrays the band’s “side project” status.Larger than life rock’n’roll riffs open the album, set to a slow bass drum stomp with tambourine hits punctuating the down beat. Then the tempo picks up in “What’s A Man’s Paris,” with guitars squealing in the background and a little more of that same tambourine. Tracks alternate between the slower and faster sides of mid-paced rock, with not an urgent punk beat in sight. The pace is perfect for Presley and Everett to explore the capabilities of their armada of effects pedals, employing reverb, chorus, wah and a perfect classic rock fuzz distortion. “Post Mortem, Post Bordem” has a washed out tone that sounds like it was recorded in a cavern. Later in the disc, “Claws & Paws” utilizes sharp guitars oozing with feedback to punctuate the transition between verses. However, the boys know the opportune times to kill the effects and let their clean picked notes carry through, like on “Fall” and “Helium Heels.”
A dark vibe permeates the album, but not enough to weigh down the songs. What is contained within is solid guitar-driven rock, comparable to Dead Meadow.
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