| Band Name: diana darby
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Title:
fantasia ball |
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| About
The CD: A cross between Catpower and Anne Sexton. Diana has been featured on NPR Weekend Edition. The most real, intensely quiet and beautiful music we've ever heard. www.dianadarby.com |
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Get Your Copy Today
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| Style:
Alternative |
| Release Date:
11/18/2003 |
| Label:
delmore recording society |
| Management:
N/A |
| Band's Website:
Click Here |
| Join Bands Mailing List:
Click Here
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| Email The Band:
Click Here |
| Home State: TN | | Home City: nashville |
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01: Fly Away
02: Falling Down
03: If It Feels Good
04: Summer
05: Ferry
06: My Own
07: The Only One Who's Listening
08: Happy
09: Mother
10: Caroline
11: Blue Turns To Grey
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There's a popular misconception that quiet music has to be gentle music, a notion that's turned on its head on Diana Darby's Fantasia Ball. Subdued guitars provide most of the instrumentation, a cello adds the requisite atmosphere, and bass and drums lurk somewhere in the backround, but its Darby's scraped-dry vocals that hold your attention, murmering phrases like ''Why are all the flowers dying?' or ''You taught me how to be afraid'' in your ear. Darby has an excellent grasp on how to create a mood that envelops the listener, even as the mood becomes increasingly disturbing, as in ''My Own,'' an ode to mother that ultimately takes a sinister turn. The final track, a stripped down reworking of the Stones' ''Blue Turns To Grey,'' sums up Darby's aching worldview.
- Gillian G. Gaar - Rolling Stone Online
Sometimes a mere hush can be revelatory, and singer Diana Darby makes sure that her whispered vocals and murmured music are as candid as you can stand. As she floats a series of images by your ears - the clock ticking on the wall, insects falling from the sky, her mother's dissatisfaction with who her daughter has become - the gentle lapping of Darby's voice pulls you into the songs' terrible truths. The music is both ominous and reassuring- a mildly disturbing one-two punch. Along with Lisa Germano's Lullaby for the Liquid Pig, Fantasia Ball is one of the dreamiest discs of the year.
– Jim Macnie - VH1
Listen and let your own heart follow into Diana Darby's world. Here, notes are sung whispered, and guitars and cellos breathe in unison, and all that you once thought was, isn't. Like in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, we aren't sure if we should follow the little white rabbit or run from it. Raw, dark and fragile, her lyrics are cryptic warnings; a vein bleeding into a golden cup, where roses bloom beneath the steps of a girl named Caroline and the onset of Summer is filled with not sunshine, but rain and the stench of death. Closets are opened and characters step forth that have never seen daylight. Some grotesque and angry, others scared children, peeking just an eye out from behind the velvet curtain while lights flicker off and insects beat themselves to death with their own wings. Such is the world of Fantasia Ball, Diana Darby's second album, recorded on a four-track cassette by a voice so delicate it could make butterflies bleed.
Only once does that delicacy morph into an uncontrollable rage. ''My Own'' (which begins with the couplet ''I feel your blood run through my veins. I pray to God we're not the same.'') is an aural assault on everything she inherited from her mother but also incriminates Darby as well. ''We become our own abusers after we leave our parents house. You never escape.'' The result is a mix gone mad, where basses rise and fall, drums fade in and out, and electric guitars scream at will.
Throughout Fantasia Ball, Darby transports her listeners into forgotten emotions with a voice so soft, and so honest, that any pretense of a shell is stripped away. Born into a chaotic family in Houston, Texas, Diana Darby tuned out the screaming all around her to listen to the voices in her head. The album begins like a Grimm's Fairy Tale with ''Fly Away'': ''If I could be anything at all/ I would step out of myself and Iíd never call.'' What follows isn't so much ''performed'' as confessed, similar in tone to poets Anne Sexton, and Sharon Olds. Her deceptively simple and childlike songs brings to mind the third VU album, and other strangely quiet music of that period. It is no wonder that the first guitar Arthur Lee played when he got out of jail was Diana Darby's. Perhaps the best way to describe her is to quote a line from her song Caroline, ''She is a girl not of this atmosphere.''
Diana has appeared on the Spanish compilation Acuarela Songs (M. Ward, Tara Jane O'Neil) and on Nothing Left To Lose - a tribute to Kris Kristoferson (Grandaddy, Richard Buckner). An unreleased song from the Fantasia Ball sessions, ''Crazy'' will appear on Eye Of The Beholder 3 (Devendra Banhart, Adrian Crowley) on Tract Records this fall. ''Sunday It's Clover'' appears on ''Comes With A Smile'' #13 CD.
Diana Darby achieves a rare mixture of softness and strength on Fantasia Ball. The album is unassuming, mostly based on guitar and Darby's voice, but that voice is so dreamy and lovely that it's plenty enough. Just try to imagine anearthier Kendra Smith. or perhaps a less cloying Hope Sandoval.
- Elizabeth Vincentelli - Time Out NY
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