The Don Darlings - If You Can't Be Good (single 2014) by HEPTOWN RECORDS

The new single, out Oct 13, taken from the self titled second album out Oct 24 on Heptown Records.

Video:
http://youtu.be/yt1zPcPqjmo

”If You Can’t Be Good” is an odyssey about the life of an infamously pathological liar who some believe was named Johnny Bode. The title is a veiled, yet precise, warning about how life can turn out through a destructive device of doing everything you can in the most horrendous manner possible. Yet at the same time, there is an enormous power to this come-back king. He was a driven by a thirst to prove his talent and fight against the narrow-mindedness of his age. An unbearable ability to always find new ways to succeed despite the chains of his powerful madness.

“Like a dying heart at the bottom of a muddy black hole, The Don Darlings pump forth grinding sorrow with a confident genuineness that would probably impress both Nick Cave and Tom Waits alike. This is a very successful hybrid of the blackest soul of country with the hardest genres of Central Europe from the 80’s, with one foot in Dallas and the other in Berlin.”

These words come from a review of a live show the band performed at Way Out West-festival in 2011. By this time the band had received roaring reviews for their debut album, The Shortest Straw, which helped propel them onto the end of the year “best of ” lists in native Sweden, like Sonic and Dagens Skiva. They had also already gone on several European tours.

The Don Darlings hailed sound has been associated with the genre called Dark Southern Americana, where Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino bloody knuckles over direction while Waits and Cave complete the soundtrack. Text and music become intertwined and every song proposes the possibility of a new cinematic experience.