daarling dives into the deep within

Chicago 3-piece daarling released their debut album The Deep Within late last year. The band, made up of Andrew Bess (guitar), Rob Kristan (drums), and Erin Lyle (vocals, bass), creates an interesting blend of alt-rock and shoegaze that sometimes dips into atmospheric grunge. The Deep Within blends intricate guitar textures with Lyle’s voice delicately hanging above the instrumentation. At times, her voice moves with the music. Every once in a while though, it breaks free to create unexpected interactions between the music and vocals. 

In our Q&A with the band, we discuss the intricacies of songwriting, dynamics in rock music, the trio’s collaborative process, and more.

Congrats on The Deep Within! You recorded the album in your basement with CJ Melton. What was the process of working with CJ like?

Erin Lyle: Thank you! Yeah, we recorded the album in the basement of our old practice space which was where we started practicing together as a 3-piece. It was really interesting to be able to create our own studio space from scratch, and in the process, we became really good friends with CJ. We wrote both “Leech” and “The Virtue of Do or Die” while we were recording the album, and CJ pushed us to explore those tunes while we trapped ourselves in the basement for several days. I think good things come out of forced chaos like that. CJ was great company and helped keep us from going fully insane for sure, not to mention how easy they made the whole process feel.

The album sounds like it would translate extremely well in a live setting. Did you approach the project to highlight your strengths as a live band?

Erin Lyle: I don’t suppose we thought of it as a way to highlight any strengths, but yeah we did want it to be a record that could be performed live with just the three of us. That was one of the first things CJ asked about when they came into the recording process–if we were playing it like we do live or planning on adding extra textures, synths, etc. There are some additions scattered throughout the record, but for the most part, we recorded the songs live as full takes with everyone in the same room so that ends up being a lot of the sound. I think a lot of the music we love as individuals is written and recorded in the same way–to be performed live–so it was sort of the natural thing to do.

Andrew Bess: A lot of my favorite records were recorded live with minimal overdubs, and I have always felt that approach is best for capturing the energy of a live show. Which in our case, for this record, was the most natural way to do this. I’ve been thinking of it as ‘live plus’, overdubbing just a few instruments and things here and there to mimic the energy of a live show. I wouldn’t say that’s set in stone as the method going forward since I love weird recording and arrangement methods, so we’ll see what sort of nonsense we get into on the next release. 

What was your songwriting process like for the album? Do you work songs out as a band or do you each write your parts, then collaborate on ideas?

Rob Kristan: We do a mix of things; generally Erin or Bess will come up with a melody or guitar line and we’ll use that as a jumping-off point. As we’ve grown as a band we’ve spent a lot of time learning how to play and write with each other; sometimes there are whole song ideas at once, sometimes bits and pieces we sit with for a while till we know how it wants to sound. It’s a very collaborative process, especially the newer tunes. There can be some tension when we’re figuring out how a song wants to sound- a lot of back and forth with Ideas, but it’s a good tension.

The songs on the album reflect a variety of topics, from personal growth on “Metamorphosis” to capitalism on “Out of Greed.” Your lyrics have a sense of depth – they’re inquisitive, sharp, and often direct. How do you approach writing lyrics?

Erin Lyle: I mainly write all the lyrics, and it is kind of like a personal journal come to life. A lot of the time I don’t think, “I’m gonna write a song about xyz.” It’s usually a result of overthinking about that subject for a long time. A lot of the time I’ll be home alone just muttering to myself, singing to myself, and something pops out of that. Whether it be a line or a phrase that we end up using, it usually just flows from there. Especially songs like “Metamorphosis.” That one I wrote a long time ago when I was going through a transitional period and I felt like lots of people were telling me I “changed.” I just thought, “No, I’ve always been this way. This is who I am, you just didn’t accept it until it was too obvious to brush off. I’ve just gotten more confident and the idea of metamorphosis is bullshit.” It’s a weird feeling to come out of your shell but still feel like the same person. Lots of our songs are about the frustrations of living under capitalism, since that’s so prevalent to me in everyday life, like all the time. I don’t think of trying to be edgy, or any real sort of way when I’m writing songs. It’s usually a cathartic-like outburst that I repeat over and over again when I’m alone and then translate in a way to be able to yell them into the void, with people watching and listening, I guess. It’s always very special and strange to perform a new song in front of a crowd. It always feels like I’m sharing something that was never really meant to be shared, and screaming it at the top of my lungs. It feels good but weird.

The band has gone through different iterations over the years. How would you describe the dynamic between you now as a 3-piece band?

Erin Lyle: It is an interesting shift because we were not “daarling,” as you would know us today, with our previous 5-piece band. Although some of our songs on this first album like “Pathetic,” “Industry Standard,” and “Metamorphosis” were originally written as that 5-piece, we altered them slightly for daarling. That band originally was our friends who loved music coming together to simply just be able to play music–doing covers, hanging out, and then eventually trying to write music of our own. But we were just in high school and later college, not considering becoming a fully-fledged band beyond that.

When we wanted to continue writing music during and after our last years of college, through moving and the pandemic, daarling became a project of its own that feels very new to us in spirit, and a bit more serious as we navigate the indie music world now.

Projects like this just kind of happen. From where we started, I think as friends wanting to play music together. As it evolves, it changes. Different friends get introduced to it, and new music comes out of it. It’s the great thing about being invested in making music with the people that are close to you, it changes with you and you never really know where it will take you, but it is exciting and always fun.

The band mentioned in another interview that you lived together. Did that make it easier for you to work on the album?

Andrew Bess: Just Erin and I live together, and it can go both ways. It does make it easy to run ideas back and forth quickly as we’re working on a very new song. I can bounce arrangement ideas and whatnot off of Erin immediately. It generally helped us to be on the same page for a lot of writing on this record. On the other hand, when we’re just getting a song started, it can be a little difficult to not have the space all to yourself when you’re figuring something out from scratch. I don’t want to subject Erin to me playing 100 slightly different versions of the same guitar riff, and I don’t think she wants to make me listen to her figure out a melody from nothing with no accompaniment. But overall, once a song is starting to establish itself, it makes it a lot quicker going than bringing up brand new ideas in practice or sending files back and forth, especially when you’re not 100% certain you even like it yourself.

One of my favorite tracks on the album is “The Rules.” I like how the melody at times floats over the instrumentation, making it feel almost like a spoken word piece. How did that song come together?

Andrew Bess: This one sat around half-started for a while before really taking shape. I think I had a voice memo of Erin singing it with no instruments sitting on a hard drive for like 8 months before I finally found a guitar part that made sense to me. I’ve always thought Erin’s approach to melodic phrasing is very unique, and it often leads us to interesting interplay between the instruments and her voice.

On songs like “Cherish/Flourish” and “Dig” the band plays with dynamics, at the same time creating these really interesting guitar/noise textures. Are there any artists that the band is particularly inspired by?

Andrew Bess: I think part of that stems from me getting bored with my playing very quickly, or I subconsciously assume the listener will get bored just as fast. Something has to change to keep things engaging, and I’ve always thought dynamics are sadly overlooked as a tool in rock music overall. For me, I get a lot of inspiration from bands like Pile and Krill, where there are often huge dynamic shifts or big dissonant moments to help drive the songs through the changes and sections. When we’re working over a new song in practice, I’ll often say “And then it falls off a cliff” to describe the level of dynamic shift I want us to hit.

What’s next now that the album is out? Any upcoming shows you’d like to mention?

Rob Kristan: We’re working on an EP for this spring right now! And we’ve been very busy booking shows lately, namely a spring tour to the East Coast and back. We announced it a couple of weeks ago and are super excited. We’ve done a couple of smaller runs around the Midwest, but this feels like our first proper tour as a band. We played a handful of shows in Chicago in February and are taking March off to prep. Everything was booked ourselves, and we do all the merch ourselves, so it’s a bit of an effort to get things ready.

Anything else you want people to know about the album?

Andrew Bess: It’s the first but it ain’t the last! We are constantly working on new music. The exciting thing about music projects like daarling is the process of creation and seeing where the next thing takes us. This album feels like it was a long time coming, especially for Erin and I, who have been writing music together for quite some time now–without truly feeling ready to release something like this. It is exciting to have something this precious to us out in the world. It is even more exciting moving forward and getting to do what we love: creating music for ourselves and hopefully others who can find something precious in these songs like we do. 

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The Deep Within is out now and can be purchased on CD and cassette via Bandcamp. You can also listen wherever you stream music. Follow daarling on Facebook & Instagram. You can see the band on tour this spring:

Apr 15 - Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
Apr 16 - Fort Wayne, IN @ TBA
Apr 17 - Columbus, OH @ Dirty Dungarees
Apr 18 - Rochester, NY @ Bar Bad Ending
Apr 20 - Burlington, VT @ The Monkey House
Apr 21 - Boston, MA @ O’Brien’s Pub
Apr 24 - New York, NY @ Trans Pecos
Apr 26 - Baltimore, MD @ The Compound
Apr 27 - Washington, DC @ Rhizome
May 1 - Nashville, TN @ The East Room
May 2 - Jeffersonville, IN @ IN Wrong Side 812
May 3 - Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub
May 4 - Indianapolis, IN @ Healer

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