Release Date: September 2003
The Darlings
- Kill Your Television
Matthew Ralph
It was in high school I believe when my brother came home with a big
bumper sticker, one of those "Kill Your Television" stickers you could
buy at the trendy stores in the city. Immediately placing the sticker
on his acoustic guitar case, we both sat back and admired it. What a
cool excuse to be violent — to be angry at our television and the media
at large. Days after admiring the sticker on the guitar case we were
again glued to the latest episode of 120 Minutes on MTV, where we found
out about all the cool new bands. After all, we weren't really in favor
of killing the set.
That sticker is still funny, but what isn't funny is how much worse the
programming on our television has gotten. News has become more and more
watered down to the "fair and balanced" coverage of the sensational
pro-war boneheads of Fox all the way down to the redundant cable news
channels that repeat the same slanted stories all day long while
ignoring what seems to be truly important — all the stuff that doesn't
get ratings.
The Darlings, a tender indie-rock husband and wife plus one trio from
Tulsa, Oklahoma, take a poke at this overkill of media being channeled
through our American television sets with the opening track — a sound
collage of the band members reciting news reports. Coupled with the
violently creepy photos of a television make it at first seem like the
makings of a concept album, but this isn't preachy anti-establishment
kind of stuff. Good thing too because it's too darn pretty really to
pass for middle finger to the man political ranting. Even the jangly
pop "Soap Opera Bliss" with its chorus, "Come on everyone kill your
television" comes off soft with its tongue in cheek delivery.
Wearing quite a few influences on their sleeve at a time, Kill Your
Television is in some ways a visit through Stuart and Annie's record
collection. There's the early '90s section with Dinosaur Jr., R.E.M.,
Veruca Salt, Sebadoh, and Pixies records, the late '90s shelf with
Built to Spill, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Pavement, and more recent stuff
like Mates of State finding its way into the mix. At times this
contributes to a bit of a lack of continuity, but for the most part
redundancy is avoided with the alternating of Annie and Stuart fronting
songs. Annie has a sharp voice she adds to the more dreamy songs.
Stuart has a more laid back and rougher delivery that contributes
nicely to the more aggressive numbers.
Mellow and dreamy in songs like "Rosebud" and "Unnamed Opus," the band
carries a more aggressive tone on "Sailor Song" and "Anderson" a spacey
anthemic tune written by former band member Charles Elmore. "Retail"
has a brooding quality that certainly brings to mind the countless
hours of standing in one place dealing with rude customers. "Rock Show
Love" is a punchy number that lives up to its billing. "Omnipotence" is
a quirky slacker love song.
Though disjointed at times in terms of continuity, "Kill Your
Television" is representative of a band starting to come into its own
sound that will only be tweaked tighter with subsequent live
performances.
posted 11.27.03
-----
Matt Ralph has bags full of bad CD's. Add to his collection at matt@tangzine.com
2002 White Elephant
Productions