BIO
“Now, anyone who speaks to me about Xtra Mile Recordings will always have me reminiscing fondly about Dartz!. This Is My Ship, their debut album, is such an incredible pop record, extracting just a little of the guitar histrionic DNA of the era and taming it with the danceable, rhythmic, almost funky sounds of Clor and the energy of Hot Club De Paris, and that-era Foals.
It clambers over all the intricacies though, instead boasting choruses upon choruses. They seemed so confident in terms of songwriting that one record highlight, ‘Laser Eyes’, spends a minute of gorgeous, metronomically-building guitar lines right up to the OBVIOUS ANTICIPATORY OBLIGATORY THRASHY CHORDS you wanted them to do, only to suddenly end the song.
No chorus. That’s….amazing. Meanwhile, the singles were all excellent. ‘Fantastic Apparatus’, ‘Once, Twice, Again!’, and ‘St Petersburg’ chime, churn and crescendo in similar ways but leave you in no doubt as to the diverse melodic impact of the band, and still wanting more.
It’s an album I played regularly. It’s an album I sang to, danced to, lived in for at least a year solid. It narrowly escaped being my album of 2007, which means it’s timeless, and not of its time like eventual winner Saturday Night Wrist. It wasn’t just the sound, of course.
Hidden in the simple, catchy lines – as ever within the words of my favourites – was belonging. Anxiety and slight confusion at how society seemed to be developing, wandering and wondering, intelligent yet placid or wildly imaginative, Dartz! captured my mid-twenties and the uncertain future which lay frighteningly close.