Hot Wax: Darla Farmer’s Rewiring the Electric Forest

The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.

It’s often said that if a critic can’t pigeonhole a band into a genre from nuances that remind them of their musical mainstays, said band and/or album must be doing something unique and right. The creativity quotient must be through the roof, and the band is forging ahead into uncharted musical waters. I find this to be one of the most positive aspects of the new release from Nashville-based musical troubadours Darla Farmer. Unpredictable, experimental, angst-ridden, and scattershot are all ways to describe Rewiring the Electric Forest. Fasten your seatbelts for plenty of musical twists and turns on this album.

I headed outside for a walk, even though it was raining enough to need an umbrella, to experience a more intimate listen to Rewiring the Electric Forest on my earphones. It’s great to hear something completely different from the norm when it comes to an indie band. In Darla Farmer’s case, an eclectic mix of instruments and a desire to push the envelope of rock music result in the creation of an album that is at times freakish and fantastical, at others mercurial and unstable. A walk in the rain under an umbrella is a fittingly surreal situation for listening to this album, the band’s first full length release from Paper Garden Records. There is something for many different personalities of music fans: Ska, folk, Americana, pretty Rockabilly ballads, and bombastic, horn driven Carnival-esque musical nostalgia tracks intermingling with 1950’s American Doo-Wop. Not to mention a vocal style that gets your attention, for better or worse, and lyrics that hold their own in the midst of such imaginative music.

Indeed, one of the most noteworthy elements of Darla Farmer’s sound isn’t the music so much as the sound of Clint Wilson’s vocals, which sound impish and youthful. He even sounds a bit monotone and nasal, and at first I was really thrown off by it. Eventually, I did come to think of it as slightly more endearing, though, and the lyrics give Wilson decidedly more weight and merit. On “Big Accident,” for example, when he sings, “We’ll plan something big, yeah we’ll plan something grand, and we’ll just pretend that it’s an accident,” he sounds childlike and his voice sounds a little less confident when he trails off with a “whoo.” Admittedly, this “plan” is almost telling of Darla Farmer’s M.O. When Wilson sings, “Everything is falling faithfully, I see the past is chasing me,” on “The Cow That Drank Too Much,” he sounds too young to have such concerns. The lyrics seem wise at times, however, which provides an intriguing contrast to this childlike voice. I’m not sure why, but this reminds me of some sort of weird, quirky State Fair talent show, with a very young, waggish singer fronting a mature band with a full sound, made up of powerful trumpets, guitars, and a deliciously daring piano that keeps kicking things into high gear with its rollicking high notes. Even the guest vocalist on “Tommy Bones” sounds too quaint, perhaps transported from the Dust Bowl era. This Americana folk style is such a remote cultural relic that it’s not always easy on the ears.

The arrangements have a fickle way of switching gears abruptly, and some of them offer little in the manner of experimental payoff for the listener. “Sweet Fires” demonstrates these unnerving arrangement choices. “Dirty Keys” proves the daredevil nature of Darla Farmer, with Wilson introducing a strange screech over a dramatic, dusty, Americana Big Band rocking out eerie bits of Ska. There are at least a couple of tracks that offer some ingenious style and originality. “Mechanical Thoughts” is a damned good time with staccato horns, Franz Ferdinand-style guitar, and a great dirty bass line, but the reintroduction of Wilson’s shriek and the band’s shifting gears punctures the potency too quickly.

There are a couple of restrained, quiet moments of repose by the end of Rewiring the Electric Forest. “Tree On A Hill” is proof that there is another sort of steam Darla Farmer can tap into. The gentle strumming of the guitar meshes beautifully with the passionate, yet unobtrusive horns and subdued bass. The lyrics are striking and inspired – “I wrote you this quote in a letter hoping what someone else said would make you feel better.” And then, sung sagaciously, “Now my vision starts to blur and I can see/ only one color. What a beautiful feeling,/ can’t believe that this is what I’m seein’.” The music crescendos in a very weepy way, and is consistent with the tone of the song’s arrangement throughout. There are no sharp, uncomfortable turns in “Tree On A Hill,” nor in the album’s closer “The Vigilant Mr. Lynch,” which is sort of a dramatic story-song, certainly a last track comedown, that has a Decemberists’ tack for songwriting. The story is short, however, and the album closes on a quick, mischievous note.

Amanda Carnes