The Darcys play abbreviated Maxwell’s set

One of Toronto’s latest up and coming rock bands, The Darcys, played a show alongside Amos the Transparent on the stage of Maxwell’s Music House this past Thursday evening. The venue provided an intimate setting for the young musicians, placing them in close range to a rather modest and scattered audience.

With a hauntingly mellow electronic ambiance to their music, the atmosphere was ideal for a fan of the particular genera. However, it is safe to say The Darcys have a sound that is all their own.“We’ve focused a lot in the last few years on creating our own sound as far as the noise is concerned on the record. It’s a lot of distortion and delay noise and that is something that a lot of bands aren’t doing. Instead of going out there and trying to replicate something that’s been done. We try to create our own [sound],” said drummer Wes Marskell in an interview with The Cord.
This particular quality makes The Darcys hard to pin-point in regards to style. “The tagline has been art rock, but we’re just a rock band I think. Because we don’t have the standard verse chorus layout of the songs we get that art rock label because they’re not structured like pop songs. But we’re more or less just a rock band, in my mind anyways,” commented Marskell.

With a new record released this year that can be downloaded for free on the band’s website, Waterloo was just a short stop in The Darcys’ recent promotional tour across Canada. Unfortunately, the stop was much shorter than we could have expected, as the band finished up their set after only a few songs without much more of an explanation than that a member had taken ill.

Later, the band took to their Twitter, letting fans know, “Dave [The Darcys bassist] fainted during our set tonight in Waterloo. He is feeling better now. Sorry to everyone who came out & we will see you tomorrow in Toronto.”

The Darcys’ recently released self-titled record marks a significant point in the progression of The Darcys’ musical career, according to the band.

“We were very unknown, and then all of a sudden this record came out. 2006 was when we sort of became a band, but we were just a bunch of drunk dudes who wanted to meet girls in Halifax and then when we made this record it was a little bit more serious. We had one record before this one but it doesn’t count in the same way,” remarked Marskell.

Developed over the last three years, the record has been quite a project for The Darcys as Marskell explained, “It has a lot to do with distance and space and recreating emotions. There’s a lot of noise on the record and we sort of try to make these noises to create moments.”

The group truly embodies the dream of every aspiring Canadian garage band, having gone through the same struggles along the way without accepting defeat.

“I’ve been doing this for such a long time as just guys, growing up, being in a band in high school,” reflected Marskell, continuing, “I think it’s really easy to get discouraged if your band breaks down or your lead singer quits. But it you have the drive and push through these things, miraculous things can happen.”