Bold and original, ‘Dear Author’ is a fabulous slice of psychedelic indie from the creepily titled L.A outfit ‘Darker My Love’. A flat, off rhythm chorus is reminiscent of Syd Barrett – with the simple bass and pounding beat carrying a rather slick melody. This is great retro indie, with palpable depth and flair; like Arthur Lee’s Love, with the shoegazing, stoner groove of The Jesus and Mary Chain. Darker My Love capture that slightly heading, engrossing quality of great late 60′s psychedelic rock. Despite the mildly stalkerish tone, this is a measured and extremely catchy number. The grungy rhythm section of Tim Presley and Rob Barbato honed their skills with a stint in The Fall, featuring on 2007′s hit and miss ‘Reformation Post TLC’ album. This is a sharp and exciting California rock – ‘Dear Author’ really gets under the skin of that great West Coast psychedelia sound – and carries it forward to the present day, adding contemporary bite.
L.A based psychedelic rock troupe Darker My Love follow up their breakthrough album ’2′ with ‘Alive As You Are’, a laconic road trip soundtrack that never really commits to either psychedelia or rocking. 60′s reference points abound – ‘New America’ is a direct descendant of The Kinks, with Tim Presley’s vocals in particular evoking Ray Davies, whilst ‘Backseat’ brings to mind Lou Reed covering The Monkees whilst ‘sucking on codeine’. In fact, it could be said that the greatest failing of the album is that each track immediately brings to mind one of the band’s influences. The group effectively manage to create a pleasantly laid-back musical soundscape – ‘Rain Party’ is so relaxed it’s practically recumbent – but there’s little to really get excited about, and no real urgency on the part of the band to lift their sound beyond a cosily-familiar retro field trip. This could be excused on a debut, but now that they’re three albums in Darker My Love really should be doing a little more to put their own identity forward.
