Getting to this Record of the Week a couple days late after a busy couple weeks, but that certainly doesn’t cheapen the selection. One of the biggest musical surprises of 2010 thus far happens to be one of the best releases as well!

We were huge fans of Darker My Love’s last album, 2. A dark, shoegaze-y, psychedelic album, it had flourishes of pop rock that just about everyone we played it for found something to like about it. So as you could imagine, we were pretty excited for their new album, Alive As You Are. The second we got it in, we put it in the player but we could have never been prepared for what we heard.

Gone was the shoegaze elements. Out the door with the psychedelic sound. Right from the start, their influences are noticeably radically different. A dash of the Byrds here. A little bit of the Beatles there. Even a tiny bit of Grateful Dead coming through. Where before they would inundate you with distorted guitars to close a track out, now they keep it on the clean channel, opting for a slide guitar solo to bring a track to an end.

There are so many good songs on this album that we’re having a hell of a time choosing some tracks for you to check out. You can check out the first track, “Backseat”, on our brand new sampler that is free if you’re in the store! In the meantime, we have two more tracks for you to check out below!

Listen to “Split Minute” from Darker My Love’s Alive As You Are

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Listen to “June Bloom” from Darker My Love’s Alive As You Are

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