Aural Aggravation

Icons Creating Evil Art – 4th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The third single from Swedish act Darkplace is their first to feature vocals, and is not a cover of the Gary Numan hit.

The band are described as ‘a mysterious new Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk group whose forthcoming debut album, About The End Of The World, is a conceptual work inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them.’ They go on to say ‘for the members of this highly secretive group, it is not just about the music. They perceive themselves as more an art project that happens to be exploring and commenting on the state of the world through their chosen mediums of music and video.’

Is a band mysterious if they tell you they are, or does that undermine the mystery? Surely a lack of disclosure is mysterious in itself? If I’m overthinking, it’s almost certainly a consequence of their overexplaining, although I am entirely on board with the idea of an act taking their art seriously to the point of fully inhabiting that space. When it comes to concept-based creations, you have to fully believe in it, otherwise, how can you expect anyone else to?

When it comes to Darkplace, context counts for a great deal, and to provide this, I shall quote liberally here: ‘Centred around an alternative reality – or is it just a grim present and future? – the album is being unveiled gradually via a series of videos based on animated digital paintings for each of its tracks… Their new single, ‘Cars’ […] sees the story move on to a man who travels north following cryptic messages written on highway signs that only show up in the blast of his headlights. Is he the only person who can see them and follow the trail? Darkplace cryptically state that “trying to escape this psychotic, slow burning apocalypse is not easy. Nowhere is safe. These weird structures and phenomena seem to occur everywhere, all over the world. Nowhere is safe!”

Perhaps somewhat ironically, the slow-burning apocalypse of which they write is accelerating at a pace no-one can keep up with, and half the planet is on fire now, quite literally, although this afternoon I read of hailstorms of biblical proportions in Germany and Italy, smashing car windscreen and requiring snow ploughs to clear the streets. It really does feel like the end of the world, and there’s a strong chance that is truly is.

Detached from the narrative of the album, ‘Cars’ stands well as a standalone single. It’s a taut, dark (of course) slice of post-punk inspired tunage, and while its lineage is clearly one that can be traced to the early 80s, it’s equally indebted to the school of the early 00s, which brought us Interpol and White Lies. What goes around comes around, and here in 2023, times are the bleakest they’ve been since the early 80s, with the added bonus of climate change threatening the collapse of civilisation and life as we know it. It’s dreamy but driven by an insistent beat and nagging guitar lines, and if the vocals, floating in reverb, evoke The Charlatans or Slowdive, and there’s perhaps a hint of Doves in the mix, the energy is more reminiscent of early Editors. Lyrically, it’s anything but uplifting, but the musical counterpoint really sweeps you along, making for an exhilarating three minutes.

AA