Darlingside
Darlingside is a four-person indie folk band from Boston, MA. The band consists of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner, and David Senft. Their style has been described as “exquisitely arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop” by All Songs Considered. the band has released ten EPs and LPs, their latest being Everything is Alive.
History
Darlingside began as a five-piece touring Indie rock band in the fall of 2009. Members met as undergraduates while attending Williams College in Williamstown, MA. A previous iteration of the band existed while they were students and included as many as seven members.In 2010, the band went on their first national tour and released a self-produced six-track studio EP, EP 1. They released their debut full-length album, Pilot Machines, in 2012, which was recorded and co-produced by Nathaniel Kunkel. Writing about Pilot Machines, David Fricke of Rolling Stone praises the band as having “a rich line in acoustic textures and chamber-rock dynamics.”
After Kapala's departure from the band in 2013, Darlingside moved toward a traditional bluegrass set-up with all four remaining musicians clustered around a single condenser microphone. Following additional national tours translating their indie-rock songs into quartet arrangements, Darlingside released their second full-length album, Birds Say, in September 2015. After headlining across New England on a regional release tour, they further promoted the album on a national tour supporting Grammy Award-winner Patty Griffin at sold-out venues such as the Ryman and Fillmore theaters. Birds Say received critical acclaim from NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker.
In 2016, Folk Alliance International named Darlingside “Artist of the Year.” In October of the same year, Darlingside released its second EP, Whippoorwill. In 2018 the band performed at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.
In October 2021, the band wrote and performed the song "Helping Others", the ninth of 11 tracks created for the Big Hearts World program for Nickelodeon's Noggin SVOD channel which ran from late March–December 2021, with the learning program's soundtrack releasing in September and animation produced at Made by Radio.
In 2022, Senft announced that he would no longer tour or perform live with the band, though he would continue contributing in his other roles including writing and recording. Darlingside has since been joined on tour by Molly Parden, Ben Burns, and Deni Hlavinka, who have also contributed to the band's studio recordings.