DIANA DARBY - OTTERSON DIANA DARBY

‘We Are Free bolts insurrectionary spirit to the sound of The Velvet Underground’s third LP. In ugly times, Otterson also offers solace, the ghostly Laura Nyro of And What Goes On. Take Heart’ - 4/5 MOJO

‘The single ‘Say Goodbye’ and spellbinding Dear Jane are profoundly moving and engaging in their intimate raw-nerved fragility. Remarkable album….’ - 4/5 RECORD COLLECTOR

‘The fragile beauty of Vashti Bunyan with a wee bit less fairy queen serenity and a few more psychic scars. The Moe Tucker-sung Velvet Underground ballad “After Hours” expanded into an entire album. The stark immediacy of Cat Power’s Covers Record intensified by the emotional stakes of self-penned songs. All of the above could qualify as clues to what veteran singer/songwriter Diana Darby is working with on her first album in a dozen years.’ - BANDCAMP Essential Releases

Cover painting by John Otterson, and printed inner sleeve with lyrics.

U.S. PRESS:
"Conjuring visions of a wounded mind running amok in a flowing field of flowers” – CMJ
"This is the ethereal with blood beneath it” - Oxford American
"Somewhere between Nick Drake, Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500” - The Portland Phoenix
"Demonic dreams floating on celestial melodies, the marriage of heaven and hell." - NPR

Diana began work on her latest album, Otterson, during the COVID shutdown. “I was locked away like pretty much everyone else on the planet. And it was that isolation that let me go deeper into myself, and then these songs started coming. At the time, I didn’t understand what they were all about, but a unifying theme emerged – loss. Loss of a relationship, an animal, self, faith, and a shedding of emotions I had carried around for years.”

The result is a collection of songs that fold into the listeners psyche with quiet insistence. Like prayers sung in the dark to a hypnotic melody. Mid-tempo, 1966 influenced sounds lull you in, before stark, Broadway-on-acid numbers completely disarm you. A few of the songs were written years earlier and re-discovered. “When my Apollo was in the shop, and the new laptop was also in the shop, I pulled out some old hard drives and found these lost recordings. I put three that I especially liked into Logic to see if I could work with them and soon realized that they added another dimension. They give the album a layer of ghostly eeriness which I love.”

When Diana was in film school at USC, she made a documentary about John. “After deciding to use John’s painting, I pulled out my film (super 8!) and re-watched it. I realized how much I have in common with John at this point in my life. I had also suffered a serious injury in the past ten years, and experienced the loss of both of my parents, who I’d been caring for. In the film, John says, ‘Painting is a feeling thing. It has to do with the intensity of your feelings of the world around you. How much have you been through? Have you lost something dear to you? All these things add up to make a more intense human being’.

Every song on Otterson is unflinchingly honest, often inspired by nature with all its wildness, characters wearing facades for faces leading duplicitous lives, stalkers desperate for love, and sweet dream-like lullabies for the dead.