In April of 2020 pandemic had fully hit & some kind of overwhelming nostalgia already started to sink in after the initial end-of-world shock. It reminded me of a time in prison when I only wanted to listen to Grunge because it helped me remember being 13 & beautifully reckless. On a drive through the east Los Angeles neighborhoods where I had been staying, I wandered upon some rough mixes of Deadpan Darling & ended up listening to the entire album. Later that day I remember texting Ian from Blue Sky Black Death & saying that it was some kind of sin that we never put this album out. He agreed & decided that he would try to piece together anything he could find on old hard drives in order to resurrect the project. Ian was able to recover, remix and, in some few cases, remake parts of the Deadpan Darling he started composing with Kingston when he was around 19 years old. Certain songs were impossible to salvage so we ended up using original rough mixes. Overall we decided to maintain the integrity of the original recordings & present them to the public as touched up artifacts. Deadpan Darling was written by a 23 - 24 year old version of me, one who had experienced the profound pain of actual heartbreak for the first time. Heartbreak can happen throughout life - but there is no heartbreak quite like the first time. Is it odd that I am nostalgic for heartbreak ? It’s not that I miss the feeling, it’s that I miss feeling so much. We grow older & more accustomed to certain types of pain. Deadpan Darling represents naivety & romance that I will never experience again. Because of that, there are a few moments that make me cringe, but there are also moments that make me feel deeply & allow me to remember the excitement of young love & pain through songs. Not sure what others will take from it - but just hope you all appreciate the final product. 16 years later. Available for pre-order on limited vinyl & Cd today And pay-what-you-want to download on bandcamp today only:
https://fakefour.bandcamp.com/album/deadpan-darling