Darlingside + The Ballroom Thieves

160 Plochmann Lane,Woodstock NY 12498

13 February, 2022

Description

Darlingside + The Ballroom Thieves Presented by Levon Helm Studios ALL AGES Darlingside, The Ballroom Thieves Darlingside + The Ballroom Thieves will perform at Levon Helm Studios on Sunday, February 13, 2022. Gates 5:30 / Doors 6:30 / Show 7:00 Darlingside The word “extraordinary” is defined as something beyond, amazing, or incredible. The word “extralife” doesn’t exist. But in the world of Darlingside—another previously non-existent word—it’s all about invention, expansion, and elevating everything into the realm of the extraordinary both conceptually and through musical performance. The band’s new album Extralife intensifies the journey begun on its critically acclaimed 2015 album Birds Say. On that project, Darlingside’s quartet of bassist Dave Senft, guitarist/banjoist Don Mitchell, violinist/mandolinist Auyon Mukharji, and cellist/guitarist Harris Paseltiner fused assertions (“Go Back”), assumptions (“God Of Loss”), predictions (“The Ancestor”), projections (“Do You Ever Live?”) and reflections (“White Horses”). “We put our four heads together and created this collective consciousness about bits and pieces from our past and how we saw the world based upon reminiscences,” explains Paseltiner about that sojourn. It having been the Massachusetts group’s second full-length outing, Birds Say mastered a musical and lyrical path that led to the more challenging territory explored on Extralife. Mukharji describes the “Extralife” concept as “…a life beyond where we are now, whether that's a brand new thing, a rebirth, or just a new version of ourselves as we move forward.” So by abandoning Birds Say’s nostalgia and its tales of “what once was,” Darlingside created its polar opposite with Extralife, the new album exploring “what is now” and “what might be” simultaneously in the brave new world. “A lot of the album has to do with the present and the future,” Mukharji reveals, “that future being a completely unknown quantity and the present being a new and bizarre place to be living in. I think we’re grappling with a number of aspects of reality we had not expected.” That reality, surviving a dystopian landscape, constructs the new album, the band killing many of its prior darlings (the name Darlingside being a reference to non-attachment) in the process. Their Birds Say, wide-eyed innocence is now bloodshot for the better. As the title track “Extralife” informs in four-part harmony, “It’s over now / The flag is sunk / The world has flattened out,” it loosely sets the new album’s premise. However, the recording also delivers hope through Beach Boys-inspired vocals that contrast with lyrics such as “The fiery flower beds above / Mushroom clouds reset the sky.” “Eschaton” uses a similar formula, this time immersing its Waterworld imagery in fun, fluid synthesizer runs, concluding with the rally, “No matter what we’ve been / We are the upshot now.” Its axis-flipped, Escher-mimicking lyrics sketch a variation on the End Times that suggests it’s actually preventable. Even the “Taps”-inspired trumpet mourn and harmonica cries of “Hold Your Head Up High” are held at bay by the uplifting, anthemic chorus chants of the song title’s message. As seen throughout the above, Extralife is not shy about employing metaphysics to prove its flexible theses. Perhaps the most blatant example would be in “Futures.” Despite despondent references to “futureforests in the sea,” “bikini snow,” (a historical nickname for nuclear fallout) and even the Thermocene Epoch, we’re encouraged through time-traveling radio transmissions that “It’s not ever too late,” undeniable when empowered by those powerful four-part harmonies. Even the song’s tiny interpolation of The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen A Face”, “Falling, yes I’m falling, and she keeps calling me back again,” is a reassurance that, yes, as even The Fab Four suggested, we will find our way back. And if doom and gloom is reversible, perhaps whatever darling is emerging on “Indian Orchard Road” can be killed or contained by the sheer beauty of a Darlingside musical assault. Although Darlingside’s signature superpower is considered to be their vocal prowess, it perhaps can overwhelm their presentations’ subtleties, both live and in the studio. After all, the mind gravitates to that which is charming, and their harmonies could seduce the rings off Saturn. But Extralife is the first Frankensteining—as the band puts it—by the group’s four equal-status members. Each one now equally contributes to something way bigger than his individual part. Equal contributions of vocals, lyrical altruism and wisdom, and effortless musicianship are what empower today’s Darlingside and animate Extralife’s twelve reality-benders. The Ballroom Thieves In a society buoyed by lies, it takes strength to confront the truth. Unlovely, the third full length album from The Ballroom Thieves, isn’t about the complete absence of beauty. Instead, the eleven tracks on the band's latest LP are a sonic encapsulation of emotional and political dissonance, the constant state of discomfort that’s enveloped the world for the past few years. “We write about the things that are important to us and right now, it’s impossible to ignore the inadequate state of the world,” says Earley. “We just wrote the songs that came out of us and they happened to be largely political.” He continues, “In an ideal world, we would never write a political record—there’d be nothing extreme enough to warrant it.” Tackling subjects as weighty as greed, inequality, privilege, and narcissism, and as light as fulfillment and adoration, Unlovely offers a track for every occasion, whether you’re furious, depressed, exhausted, or hopeful. Songs like “Homme Run” and the title track boil over with exasperation and disgust, rage and resentment running through every line in protest of today’s global status quo. Others like “Love is Easy” and “Tenebrist” turn the focus inward onto doubts of purpose and identity. As their first album entirely co-written by Peters and Earley, save for Peters’ song “Pendulum,” Unlovely is a tangible reflection of their evolution from band members to life partners. “Figuring out how to write as a writing team has been something of an adventure,” says Earley. “We used to create songs more separately but found that we complement each other well in almost every sense of the word, including songwriting. Most of the songs I brought to the table were inspired by our dreadful news cycle but tend to involve some sort of hopeful or romantic spin, whereas most of Callie's songs are about smashing the patriarchy and destroying evil forever." Songs like “Begin Again” and the Gilberto & Getz-influenced “Don’t Wanna Dance” serve as a window into Peters’ perspective, someone who is, as she says, “smiling through” regardless of how difficult and frustrating that facade is to maintain. “I began writing a few years ago, and when I started, it felt like I opened up this whole verbal world in my head,” says Peters. “For a while, I thought that by writing all the time, I was perpetuating my pain, but over time, I’ve found a way to use words to help ease my mind.” “I wrote a lot of the lines while sitting in the van and having a difficult time as we drove past nondescript highways,” she says, adding that while some of her notes were unintelligible, others were crafted with more poetic intentions. “I hope that by getting some of my thoughts down, I could show someone lonely that there might be one other human in the world who feels like they do.” Incorporating musical styles that range from Motown to classic rock and metal, Unlovely maintains the recognizable, nostalgia-tinged sound of The Ballroom Thieves’ previous outputs while pushing a heightened brashness. Since the release of their first EP and debut full-length, A Wolf in the Doorway, The Ballroom Thieves have consistently and skillfully crossed genres, joining artists like Caamp, Langhorne Slim and Shakey Graves to bridge the gap between folk, rock and soul. With Unlovely, thanks in part to frequent collaborator Ariel Bernstein, the trio took it a step further and grew their instrumental arsenal, amplifying their signature energy and eccentricity. "Ariel has been a great friend of ours for years now," says Earley."He's a talented musician, engineer, and unlicensed band therapist, so when we decided to expand our touring party, he was the unanimous first round draft pick." Engineered and produced by Jerry Streeter (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers, Vance Joy), Unlovely was recorded in and around the northeast, predominantly at HearStudios in Camden, Maine. It’s their unique brand of powerful and harmonious music, while never shying away from topics and ideas they are passionate about that has charmed fans around the country. Their catalogue has amassed over 85 million streams and they’ve gained a loyal live following, selling out shows and earning festival spots at Boston Calling, Newport Folk, Moon River, Mountain Jam, and Calgary Folk. Ultimately, Unlovely sets the stage for The Thieves to continue to impact listeners everywhere. Darlingside The word “extraordinary” is defined as something beyond, amazing, or incredible. The word “extralife” doesn’t exist. But in the world of Darlingside—another previously non-existent word—it’s all about invention, expansion, and elevating everything into the realm of the extraordinary both conceptually and through musical performance. The band’s new album Extralife intensifies the journey begun on its critically acclaimed 2015 album Birds Say. On that project, Darlingside’s quartet of bassist Dave Senft, guitarist/banjoist Don Mitchell, violinist/mandolinist Auyon Mukharji, and cellist/guitarist Harris Paseltiner fused assertions (“Go Back”), assumptions (“God Of Loss”), predictions (“The Ancestor”), projections (“Do You Ever Live?”) and reflections (“White Horses”). “We put our four heads together and created this collective consciousness about bits and pieces from our past and how we saw the world based upon reminiscences,” explains Paseltiner about that sojourn. It having been the Massachusetts group’s second full-length outing, Birds Say mastered a musical and lyrical path that led to the more challenging territory explored on Extralife. Mukharji describes the “Extralife” concept as “…a life beyond where we are now, whether that's a brand new thing, a rebirth, or just a new version of ourselves as we move forward.” So by abandoning Birds Say’s nostalgia and its tales of “what once was,” Darlingside created its polar opposite with Extralife, the new album exploring “what is now” and “what might be” simultaneously in the brave new world. “A lot of the album has to do with the present and the future,” Mukharji reveals, “that future being a completely unknown quantity and the present being a new and bizarre place to be living in. I think we’re grappling with a number of aspects of reality we had not expected.” That reality, surviving a dystopian landscape, constructs the new album, the band killing many of its prior darlings (the name Darlingside being a reference to non-attachment) in the process. Their Birds Say, wide-eyed innocence is now bloodshot for the better. As the title track “Extralife” informs in four-part harmony, “It’s over now / The flag is sunk / The world has flattened out,” it loosely sets the new album’s premise. However, the recording also delivers hope through Beach Boys-inspired vocals that contrast with lyrics such as “The fiery flower beds above / Mushroom clouds reset the sky.” “Eschaton” uses a similar formula, this time immersing its Waterworld imagery in fun, fluid synthesizer runs, concluding with the rally, “No matter what we’ve been / We are the upshot now.” Its axis-flipped, Escher-mimicking lyrics sketch a variation on the End Times that suggests it’s actually preventable. Even the “Taps”-inspired trumpet mourn and harmonica cries of “Hold Your Head Up High” are held at bay by the uplifting, anthemic chorus chants of the song title’s message. As seen throughout the above, Extralife is not shy about employing metaphysics to prove its flexible theses. Perhaps the most blatant example would be in “Futures.” Despite despondent references to “futureforests in the sea,” “bikini snow,” (a historical nickname for nuclear fallout) and even the Thermocene Epoch, we’re encouraged through time-traveling radio transmissions that “It’s not ever too late,” undeniable when empowered by those powerful four-part harmonies. Even the song’s tiny interpolation of The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen A Face”, “Falling, yes I’m falling, and she keeps calling me back again,” is a reassurance that, yes, as even The Fab Four suggested, we will find our way back. And if doom and gloom is reversible, perhaps whatever darling is emerging on “Indian Orchard Road” can be killed or contained by the sheer beauty of a Darlingside musical assault. Although Darlingside’s signature superpower is considered to be their vocal prowess, it perhaps can overwhelm their presentations’ subtleties, both live and in the studio. After all, the mind gravitates to that which is charming, and their harmonies could seduce the rings off Saturn. But Extralife is the first Frankensteining—as the band puts it—by the group’s four equal-status members. Each one now equally contributes to something way bigger than his individual part. Equal contributions of vocals, lyrical altruism and wisdom, and effortless musicianship are what empower today’s Darlingside and animate Extralife’s twelve reality-benders. The Ballroom Thieves In a society buoyed by lies, it takes strength to confront the truth. Unlovely, the third full length album from The Ballroom Thieves, isn’t about the complete absence of beauty. Instead, the eleven tracks on the band's latest LP are a sonic encapsulation of emotional and political dissonance, the constant state of discomfort that’s enveloped the world for the past few years. “We write about the things that are important to us and right now, it’s impossible to ignore the inadequate state of the world,” says Earley. “We just wrote the songs that came out of us and they happened to be largely political.” He continues, “In an ideal world, we would never write a political record—there’d be nothing extreme enough to warrant it.” Tackling subjects as weighty as greed, inequality, privilege, and narcissism, and as light as fulfillment and adoration, Unlovely offers a track for every occasion, whether you’re furious, depressed, exhausted, or hopeful. Songs like “Homme Run” and the title track boil over with exasperation and disgust, rage and resentment running through every line in protest of today’s global status quo. Others like “Love is Easy” and “Tenebrist” turn the focus inward onto doubts of purpose and identity. As their first album entirely co-written by Peters and Earley, save for Peters’ song “Pendulum,” Unlovely is a tangible reflection of their evolution from band members to life partners. “Figuring out how to write as a writing team has been something of an adventure,” says Earley. “We used to create songs more separately but found that we complement each other well in almost every sense of the word, including songwriting. Most of the songs I brought to the table were inspired by our dreadful news cycle but tend to involve some sort of hopeful or romantic spin, whereas most of Callie's songs are about smashing the patriarchy and destroying evil forever." Songs like “Begin Again” and the Gilberto & Getz-influenced “Don’t Wanna Dance” serve as a window into Peters’ perspective, someone who is, as she says, “smiling through” regardless of how difficult and frustrating that facade is to maintain. “I began writing a few years ago, and when I started, it felt like I opened up this whole verbal world in my head,” says Peters. “For a while, I thought that by writing all the time, I was perpetuating my pain, but over time, I’ve found a way to use words to help ease my mind.” “I wrote a lot of the lines while sitting in the van and having a difficult time as we drove past nondescript highways,” she says, adding that while some of her notes were unintelligible, others were crafted with more poetic intentions. “I hope that by getting some of my thoughts down, I could show someone lonely that there might be one other human in the world who feels like they do.” Incorporating musical styles that range from Motown to classic rock and metal, Unlovely maintains the recognizable, nostalgia-tinged sound of The Ballroom Thieves’ previous outputs while pushing a heightened brashness. Since the release of their first EP and debut full-length, A Wolf in the Doorway, The Ballroom Thieves have consistently and skillfully crossed genres, joining artists like Caamp, Langhorne Slim and Shakey Graves to bridge the gap between folk, rock and soul. With Unlovely, thanks in part to frequent collaborator Ariel Bernstein, the trio took it a step further and grew their instrumental arsenal, amplifying their signature energy and eccentricity. "Ariel has been a great friend of ours for years now," says Earley."He's a talented musician, engineer, and unlicensed band therapist, so when we decided to expand our touring party, he was the unanimous first round draft pick." Engineered and produced by Jerry Streeter (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers, Vance Joy), Unlovely was recorded in and around the northeast, predominantly at HearStudios in Camden, Maine. It’s their unique brand of powerful and harmonious music, while never shying away from topics and ideas they are passionate about that has charmed fans around the country. Their catalogue has amassed over 85 million streams and they’ve gained a loyal live following, selling out shows and earning festival spots at Boston Calling, Newport Folk, Moon River, Mountain Jam, and Calgary Folk. Ultimately, Unlovely sets the stage for The Thieves to continue to impact listeners everywhere. Darlingside, The Ballroom Thieves Home of Levon's legendary Midnight Rambles, and situated on 18 acres in historic Woodstock, NY, Levon Helm Studios hosts intimate concerts throughout the year in this one-of-a-kind musical landmark. Levon Helm Studios was constructed in 1975 from local hemlock, pine, and bluestone, and was designed and acoustically engineered by Levon himself.