The Darlingtons


THE DARLINGTONS are a soft rock, shoe-gazy type of quartet. Originally from the South West of England, these four lads have been slowly climbing up the music ladder. They began 'taking things seriously' back in 2011, 2012 saw the release of debut album, 'Decades Dance' and 2013 brought well over one hundred gigs for the well-dressed foursome. 


Latest single, 'Don't Give Me Hope' has been made available upon their soundcloud, allowing all who wish to plant their ears upon the dreamy, slow building sound. A set of steady guitar strums breaks the ice for mono vocals to follow, similar to that of Liam Fray, The Courteeners. This vocal is transmitted throughout the whole track, molding a progressive instrumental, becoming a dynamic moral telling of a frustrated world, suppressed into fitting with a convention which does not fit its inhabitants. It's as if we can feel the toleration, but still crave more than what is received. 'Don't Give Me Hope' is moderately sombre, certainly taking the path of many other powerful tunes and artists that use sadness as their gateway into something much greater than all of us, human emotion. The track definitely has the overwhelming qualities of an indie band's most desired sound, so seemingly simple to tap in to, however, wearily hard to convey.
With another new single called 'Rotations' coming in March and its launch, also that month on 22nd, at The Plug, Sheffield... Make of them what you will, but The Darlingtons most definitely have a good thing going here, no-one can fault that. The Music Manual grabbed an interview with the lads to find out more about their uncharted sound...

Thank you for agreeing to this interview! I'm going to start with a cliche question but where/how and when did The Darlingtons become one?
We come from Somerset in the South West of England. We have all been friends since secondary school, but didn't form as a band until college. We only started taking it seriously in 2011 though!

Have you all been in bands before or was this a new venture for you?
Yes, Kiwi, Dan, and Biz were in an acoustic/blues band in the last few years of school, and Chris was in a classic rock band at the same time!

Is there anything that irritates you about the music industry at the moment?
Probably the fact that people seem to think it's acceptable not to pay bands to play at gigs, because the band are meant to be gaining 'exposure'… GRRRRRRRR!

You have quite a few dates coming up around the UK, what date are you looking forward to most?
There's two that we're really excited about, February 22nd in Manchester, and March 22nd in Sheffield. They look like they're gonna be awesome.

If you could describe your sound as one word and one word only, what would you say and why?
LOUD! Cos we crank it up to 11!

Do you think your inspirations make appearances within your work?
Yes, especially with the newer stuff we've been writing. Previously people used to compare us to bands like Editors, probably due to Kiwis voice, but that's not really where we're at now. We've been getting into much heavier guitar sounds like 'MBV' which have been popping up a lot!

Can you all dish any dirt on your fellow members?
Chris once got so angry at a gig that he punched a bin...

Do you have any obscure facts about yourself?
We used to be in a skate crew, and once recorded a video of us! It's probably somewhere on the internet if you dig deep enough.

Are there any other artists that you're into at the moment?
Yeah, we've been rinsing Richard Hawley Cole's Corner, the new Arctic Monkeys, MBV, a band from Weston called Presents For Sally and our favourite band of all time; The National.

Do you think image is important when it comes to bands?
Yeah, well for us it is anyway. We used to have a shocking image, and I guess more than anything it was hard to chat to fans after gigs because they'd find it difficult to recognise us. But now we've got it together and actually we feel much more comfortable on and off stage.

Finally, what are we going to be hearing from The Darlingtons this year? Any gossip?
We've got 3/4 releases planned for this year, and we're gonna be gigging a lot too, we're off to France in March to play, which should be really cool!

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