Album Notes

A pomegranate lies dissected on the cover, juice like blood and over a year in Hades worth of seeds spill forth. Listening to this record you have to assume that Diana succumbed just as Persephone did. How else could someone sing "whoever told you life was fair never spent much time sitting in the electric chair" with a laconic huskiness over a gentle pedal steel? Right from the start there is a darkness that even the jangling wind-chimes can't mask. Junebug broods like the oppressively hot Georgian day it portrays. There seems to be something sinister lurking in every corner, where even the Sweet Conversation is "wearing us down to the bone." This is a seriously shadowy album, I mean even 16 Horsepower are known to be lighter. It's like watching an accident, you want to turn away but are drawn in. I'm not trying to put you off, just warn you, I mean I like it, but those of a nervous disposition might want to tread carefully. The playing is first class, subtle and unobtrusive, fitting in with Diana's voice, which is mostly delivered in a slightly sinister hushed croon. This makes it all the more creepy, we're clearly not dealing with a bunch of hicks here. Tales of adult abuse and childhood trauma abound, from the gentle Black Dog - "daddy left you as a baby, no one thought it'd make you crazy" to the rock-out of She Won't Be Quiet - "daddy's little girl has finally come into her own," making you glad you didn't grow up in her home town. The final song gives a nod to what, surely, is a big influence, for Amelia brings laughing Lenny's Suzanne to mind, but even Mr. Cohen would baulk at a line like "the voice that guides your conscience is a psychopathic liar."
COMES WITH A SMILE UK

Diana Darby's debut is as good as I've ever heard. Forget Gillian Welch / Lucinda Williams when it comes to poetry as song this young woman out of Houston is tapping into the duende. A surface shimmer of punk/pop and brooding English folk laps at the feet of the ghost of Sandy Denny as she skirts the lake of the blues. The subject matter skims across abuse and sorrow with a voice that literally feels as if the sky is crying. The hands rowing the boat are experienced. Will Rigby of the DB's, Mark Spencer of the Blood Oranges, Mark Bosquist etc. The backings are as precise and evocative as copper etchings behind the fragile figure in a print dress. Like listening to trees fade and wither. The overall feel is mid seventies in a way and I kept thinking of Planet Waves. Standout tracks are the Appalachian ballad 'Malcolm's Song', 'Sarah' and the almost Blondie meets Patti Smith 'She won't be quiet no more' but really it's a near faultless first recording. Diana Darby is now resident in Nashville and is teaching poetry. Looks like the worlds of literature and song may be the richer for that. A black dog turned up on her doorstep and never left... 'Blackdog' pays tribute in a mellow country form to both Nick Drake and Jesse Winchester's songs of that title but leaves us with the sound of pure Darby. Closer 'Amelia' is a Leonard Cohen tune made completely her own.There are stains on the carpet in her house of the setting sun.
BUCKETFUL OF BRAINS UK

Hers is a quiet voice, blessed with all the beauty and stillness of poetry - the kind where whispers mutate into screams. Just sample a verse to know: "Bleed me from morning till daybreak/Curse me with words foul to hear/You've got your arsenal around you/While I play those games with my tears." The song is ironically is entitled "Sweet Conversation."
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