String-Rock Quintet Darlingside's New Sound

The string-rock quintet Darlingside visited the WBUR studios Monday and performed three songs.

Originally based in Northhampton, the Williams college graduates self-produced and released their first album in 2010. They've since relocated to Boston and released four more albums, while gradually developing into a more acoustic sound.

Band members include Auyon Mukharji (violin and mandolin), Harris Paseltiner (cello, acousic guitar and electric guitar), Don Mitchell (electric guitar), Dave Senft (acoustic guitair, base guitar), and Sam Kapala (drums).

How they describe their music:

Dave Senft: We are still looking for the words to encompass the new genre, but in a lot of ways we are doing a lot of the same things we were doing before. We all used to sing and we all still sing and that's a big part of what we're doing.

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But in some ways we've pared down now. There are fewer peddle effects and the volume knobs have come down a little bit. It's a little more of what we hear when we write the song in a room together and we're sitting on a couch and playing our instruments in the room — that's sort of the vibe that we want to convey, and that's part of why we now all sing around one mic and we're not on different parts of the stage. We gather around and try to stand as close to each other as we can and make it about the sound that we create together.

On the evolution of their sound:

Don Mitchell: Earlier in the summer we were realizing that what the band needed to do as far as touring was play a whole lot of shows, and unfortunately our drummer Sam was unable to come on a lot of those shows with us. And so, we sort of viewed that as an opportunity to try out a new format with this one mic thing which really wouldn't work with a full drum kit at all, and to experiment with some different forms of percussion, to experiment with writing some new material based around just voices that sound like they're in the same room together.

On how it all started:

Don Mitchell: It took a little while to get to exactly this configuration. During college, there was a version of Darlingside that had seven guys in it, three of whom weren't in the band that eventually moved into the house together in Northampton when we started out with the five piece band. The four of us were in an a capella group together, but only for one year.

On why their voices blend so well:

Dave Senft: It helps that we've been singing together since 2005 in one form or another.

Auyon Mukharji: It's taken awhile to hone in because all four of us have different voices, and so we've been playing around how to sound separate and distinct but also really blend together and sound like one voice.