DE STIJL RECORDS

KING DARVES

Sunday Nov. 13th @19:00
Worms in Women and Cattle
King Darves
Slow Tongued Beauty
Phantom Selector
Flop Sweat
@ ALAMO NB/NJ $5 

Speaking of lifestyles, while the so-called Acid Campfire of my SKELLINGTON period did more for my songwriting than any horde of high power producers could have, I still gots to say I’m jealous as hell that the Underground has come so far that there’s a long-term career awaiting such groaners as New Jersey’s 25-year-old astral beardo King Darves. Released on De Stijl Records, I was convinced for at least the first coupla spins of his stuporific album THE SUN SPLITS FOR THE BLIND SUMMER that he had to at least be Danish or Swedish, recorded in the flat farmland of Zealand or Skåne, and be as old as Povl Dissing himself. Not so, however. This young punk’s clearly been smoking Woodbines since age 7 and necking huge quantities of fine malt from even earlier. And so, armed only with a Spanish guitar and two or three mates with barely an autoharp to their names (though sucking in some sweet sweet lungfulls of backing vocal to be sure), His Madge has yawn’ed forth a veritable micro-Cinemascope epic and all of barely a half-an-hour’s duration. Say it and fuck off, or watt? Crooning wantonly, oft-atonally and always as craggily as Kan Mikami without the self-conscious need to be only himself (much like Iggy wished he could have on AMERICAN CAESAR, but failed Los Miserably), King Darves’ debut is a must for all of those who need to feel life is truly being lived to the full, but don’t have the time to do it themselves. Shockingly, Darves’ earlier stuff was apparently a bit free electronic (what the?), which is something of a surprise to me, as he here sounds pre-Eddisonian to say the least. Lahve it.

~ Julian Cope