Darlingside

Comprised of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner and David Senft, four likeminded multi-instrumentalists who first met at Williams College in 2009, Darlingside’s career has been defined by the elegance of their compositions and the unity of their four voices. Their talent for harmony and melodic world-building is part of what garnered praise from outlets like NPR, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, and what has created demand worldwide for their extraordinary live performances. Becoming beautifully unindividualized has, in other words, worked very well for Darlingside in the past. With a vigor and discipline more common to graduate-level writing workshops than to indie rock, Darlingside has, over the years, experimented with all manners of idiosyncratic methods for elevating and upholding a truly democratic process of songwriting—processes that include multiple rounds of group writing and recording exercises—all with the aim of escaping the trap that bands with multiple songwriters often fall into: ego-driven infighting and artistic incoherence.

It’s a rare thing and becoming rarer by the day: a group of musicians with that emulsifying magic to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And to see Darlingside perform live is to confirm this special chemistry. With the release of Everything Is Alive (2023) the band will, for the first time, take to the road without Dave Senft. Instead of filling his spot directly, the band has wisely chosen to honor the special chemistry of the foursome by letting those arrangements live on the recordings without obligation to faithfully recreate them onstage. While Dave remains a contributing member of the band, on tour Darlingside will perform in a completely different configuration altogether—a configuration that will, at times, include the album’s drummer Ben Burns, singer Molly Parden, and others—proving again how the group can adroitly rearrange themselves for the breaking of a new and different day.