The Deep Dark Woods

Event information

They're back! Drifter and Arkster Promotions are delighted to bring back to Brighton the Deep Dark Woods. Spines are still tingling across this city after their debut show here back in February which left the audience speechless. Since then they've had successful tours across America and Canada, been nominated for a Juno award and are on this months Uncut magazine's cover mount cd. 2012 is the year this band become huge.

Chills climb spines when sound is given room to unfurl. The Deep Dark Woods’ unflinching pursuit of steadiness between decadence and minimalism is guided at every turn by their intuitive ability to balance grit, clarity, drive and restraint with a sure focus on experimentation.

The Deep Dark Woods frame their music with subtle orchestration; songs are trimmed with minimal embellishments of banjo, piano, with subtle mellotron flutters. Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Lucas Goetz’s layers heartbreaking arches of pedal steel under the clarity and warmth of Ryan Boldt’s voice. Newest member, organ-player Geoff Hilhorst furnishes the songs’ edges with slurred polyphonies, while surefooted, danceable basslines and rich second vocals belong to Chris Mason. Burke Barlow’s clarion guitar tone and lead lines are focused and impeccable.

Their latest album, The Place I Left Behind, finds continuity in themes of temporal and geographic alienation, neglected inward trails, and the scars of abandoned intimacies. The album opens with a song about Saskatoon’s rougher edges. “West Side Street” is a study in contrasts – finespun vocals and a gently rolling melody cushion the gloomy story. “The Place I Left Behind” is loosely based on an old folk standard. Gorgeously morose, the title track confirms that The Deep Dark Woods capture lonesome yearning at its loveliest. “Sugar Mama” is a sweet and lively invitation to tap toes and shake off the blues; a seeming coming-of-age story is treated with playful banjo and an airy gait.

A rainstorm over the desert of modern music, The Place I Left Behind offers murder ballads alongside scrappy rockers, lovesick hymnals and slow-dance waltzes. The album illuminates folk traditions without stripping the shadows of roots music history – The Deep Dark Woods wake the ghosts of Appalachia with their prairie gothic pyre-side tales. The Place I Left Behind echoes with traces of time and space that are never fully abandoned or forgotten.

“[The] Deep Dark Woods work the material, storytelling aspects of the tradition. Storytelling needs a narrator, preferably a reliable, sympathetic one that’s easy on the ears, but it also needs a strong voice capable of venting horror, frustration, sadness, anger, outrage. And god knows we’ve got enough to be outraged about these days.” – Pitchfork

In support we have the SOCIETY.

Society are a three piece country rock band from West Sussex who specialise in gorgeous three part harmonies that set them apart from the current crop of Americana or West Coast rock wanabees in the UK. Comprising guitarist Matt Wise, bassist Ben Lancaster and on all things percussive F.Scott Kenny, their recorded and live sound has echoes of C.S.N.Y, The Band, The Heartbreakers, The Jayhawks and the late great Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance. Matt Wise composes most if not all of their material and when all three sing in harmony the result is simply stunning.