Darlingside


Darlingside is a four-person indie folk band from Boston, MA. The band consists of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner, and David Senft. Their style has been described as “exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop” by All Songs Considered. Their latest full-length album, Extralife, was released in February 2018 by Thirty Tigers.

History

Darlingside began as a five-piece touring Indie rock band in the fall of 2009. Members met as undergraduates while attending Williams College in Williamstown, MA. A previous iteration of the band existed while they were students and included as many as seven members.
In 2010, the band went on their first national tour and released a self-produced six-track studio EP, EP 1. They released their debut full-length album, Pilot Machines, in 2012, which was recorded and co-produced by Nathaniel Kunkel. Writing about Pilot Machines, David Fricke of Rolling Stone praises the band as having “a rich line in acoustic textures and chamber-rock dynamics.”
After Kapala’s departure from the band in 2013, Darlingside moved toward a traditional bluegrass set-up with all four remaining musicians clustered around a single condenser microphone. Following additional national tours translating their indie-rock songs into quartet arrangements, Darlingside released their second full-length album, Birds Say in September 2015. After headlining across New England on a regional release tour, they further promoted the album on a national tour supporting Grammy Award-winner Patty Griffin at sold-out venues such as the Ryman and Fillmore theaters. Birds Say received critical acclaim from NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker.
In 2016, Folk Alliance International named Darlingside “Artist of the Year.” In October of the same year, Darlingside released its second EP, Whippoorwill. In 2018 the band performed at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.

Band Name

The band’s name originates from a songwriting class taken by the band members at Williams College. The course instructor, Bernice Lewis, quoted British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in teaching the class to “kill your darlings.” Lewis applied this philosophy to songwriting, wherein a favorite line, lick, or riff might compromise the balance and arc of the song as a whole. The name “Darlingside” is an homage to “killing one’s darlings.” It is spelled with an “s” instead of a “c” because the band felt the “s” is easier on the eye.

Discography