Whilst weekend work is devoted to other ASH related things. The intention is to put two posts each weekend from the archive, leaving the week days free for five new articles.
You can still buy the Daryll-Ann Again Box Sets from Excelsior for the bargain price of 39.99 Euros. Get it while you can, as well as all the studio recordings, there's tons of rarities. You can rush off now to Excelsior to buy it now.
Mick Dillingham provides his thoughts on the excellent Daryll-Ann. You can also catch up with his Blog Adventures at Art Into Dust.
In our thirties we tend to believe that we are now for all
intent and purposes grown up and it isn’t until we start to reach our true
maturity in our mid forties or so that we realise the folly of this belief. Now
to me the average thirty year olds seem like teenagers playing at being adults.
Older and wiser certainly but not actually old and wise as yet. Too much noise,
too much ego, too many words for word’s sake.
The wisdom of age comes not from
accumulating more and more personal knowledge but instead the ability that
comes with age to whittle it all down until we are left with just the knowledge
we know to be our truth. Less is so much
more because that less we end up with is mostly real and solid. We can all look at the music we have
accumulated in our lives and think, but what if I only keep the stuff I truly,
truly love and ditch the rest? Would that weaken my collection or in reality
make it even better?
When we finally become an adult the most apparent change is
that we really don’t care that much anymore. But not at all in a negative and
world weary cynical way, in fact quite the opposite. We realise the things that
are truly worth caring about and only care for those things and we discard the
rest. And most importantly we do the same with ourselves. We whittle down our
egos and as a result we care more for those around us and less about ourselves.
We become less selfish and more selfless in our love. Finally as adults we are
the best and most efficient versions of ourselves, free from the empty noise
and storms of our later youth.
Everything is clearer and more simple and we can
look back on the friendship and relationships we have lost down the years and
wonder what the hell were we thinking when we let them become such tangled angry
sad messes. All those things that seemed
so important at the time are now viewed as really quite trivial looking back at
it. Too many trees obscuring the wood. We focused too much on the ultimately
pointless tangents that our egos led us down instead of staying focused on the
core, too busy standing up for ourselves when what we should have done is stood
back from ourselves. But we were younger, what did we know? Not as much as we
like to think that’s for sure. Now, with age, we know better.
Camper Van Beethoven
were still relatively young when they dissolved in bitter acrimony back in
1990. When I first interviewed Jonathan
Segel and Victor Krummenacher a few years later they were both producing their
own brilliant music but the heartbreak of losing CVB still hung over them like
the ghost of a long lost love.
Then at the start of the next decade, David
Lowery, a few years older than the rest of them and still going strong with
Cracker had the thought that maybe they were mature enough as people now to
bring Campers back to life once more. And he was right, now they saw the wood
not just the trees and 13 years on from that return and they are stronger than
ever, producing their finest works and live, even more dazzling then they ever
were. With the stillness of age comes stability and acceptance of others and
what once had become horribly fraught is now effortlessly relaxed.
When a band reforms simply because they are old enough now
to put aside all the things that drove them apart originally and instead
appreciate what each of them brought to the whole and what the whole inspired
in them that they never quite found outside of it, then the results are more
often than not excellent.
Who can argue with the quality of the recent reformed
dB’s, Grapes Of Wrath or Wanderlust albums? And if it had happened wouldn’t we
all now be praising the new Game Theory album as a wonder to behold. Cotton
Mather, The Rain Parade, The Three O’Clock and The Mutton Birds all returned as
live bands in recent times and we all hope that they might go on to make new
music together, utterly confident that the results will be vital and worthy.
I love Dutch masters Daryll-Ann, they are one of my beloved combos and always will be and the news that they were reforming for a handful of local gigs in support of the long anticipated box set of early works and rarities, cheer me up no end. Not that there’s any chance of me seeing them live again, because there isn’t and not that they are considering recording together again because as yet there is no talk of that and it might be just these few dates and nothing more.
That’s okay, both Anne Soldaat and Jelle Paulusma have produced solo work of consistent brilliance so its not like they need Daryll-Ann to bring them back to form because they never lost it. What cheered me up was the thought they were finally old enough to rediscover their friendship once more.
That’s okay, both Anne Soldaat and Jelle Paulusma have produced solo work of consistent brilliance so its not like they need Daryll-Ann to bring them back to form because they never lost it. What cheered me up was the thought they were finally old enough to rediscover their friendship once more.
I interviewed both during their Daryll-Ann days and in
the years since and when asked both were adamant that they would never work together
again. And while I dropped their muted responses to that question from the
finished articles I always had the thought that they were just not old enough
yet for the stillness to have kicked in. But then over the last few years you
could see their friendship slowly wander back into their lives via their casual
interactions on Facebook.
Now
finally the friendship has returned and in consequence so has Daryll-Ann. Do we
need a new Daryll-Ann album? No. Do we want a new Daryll-Ann album? Oh, but certainly
yes please and if they do decide to do a new album as far as I can see there
are two ways the dynamic behind it will go.
Don’t Stop, the last
Daryll-Ann album was an attempt to revive the band that failed. Jelle and Anne,
who have never written songs together, brought in some songs and with a group
of musicians recorded them. But by then their friendship was in tatters, there
was too much recent water under the bridge and the atmosphere in the studio was
uncomfortable at best. Despite this
adversity the album is superb in its own way but really with such talent
involved it was bound to be. Not that is saved the band because inevitably they
did not survive the tour in support of the album.
So a decade down the road and with friendships renewed and
returned by the salve of maturity they could both bring in songs to be recorded
by the band as a whole, this time in a far nicer atmosphere and the results
will be great. That would be the easy way.
Weeps is considered to be the band’s masterpiece and I think the reason
for this is that it’s the album where the band became greater than the parts and
took on a life of its own and truly became Daryll-Ann, a magical entity in its
own right. Something beyond the individual talents involved. But then Jelle and
Anne got carried away with themselves and somewhat dropped the ball. They did
not involve the rhythm section in the recording of Happy Traum and while its
another great album, its no Weeps, because it is not really Daryll-Ann anymore, more a Soldaat/Paulusma album.
They had made the mistake of believing they
alone were Daryll-Ann, too busy standing up for themselves instead of standing
back and seeing the whole that was greater than the parts. They both walked
away from Daryll-Ann after that. Ann was the one to actually leave and in
consequence Jelle was the one left with the name. He mistakenly thought that he now had to be
Daryll-Ann, though in reality he had no more chance of making a Daryll-Ann
album alone than Ann would have it if had been him left with the name.
Trailer
Tails is a lovely album in itself, but it is a Daryll-Ann album in name
only. Jelle subconsciously knew this and
pulled Ann back on board for the live shows that followed and the subsequent
last gasp attempt to save the band that was Don’t Stop. It was always doomed to
fail because the now broken friendship of Ann and Jelle was a gaping wound at
the very heart of the band and both were still not old and mature enough yet to
fix it.
So instead Jelle tried filling that fatal hole by taking control and
leadership of the band. At the time it must have seemed the right thing to do
but as history shows, for Daryll-Ann it wasn’t. And Jelle at the last knew his
mistake and this time it was he that left and relinquished the name and that
was the end of Daryll-Ann for now.
But now the classic Weeps line up has returned, maturity and
time having renewed friendships and mended bridges, the band are in the perfect
place to create Daryll-Ann music as Daryll-Ann once more. The pressure is off, they have nothing to prove and this is
not their career but just a part of it. Both Jelle and Ann are hugely
creatively successful as solo artists and so neither has any need to bring any
of their own outside musical explorations to the table but should instead focus
on what Daryll-Ann alone can do.
For most band’s with two equally prolific songwriters it is
usually the case that one songwriter is overall better than the other when it
comes down to it. With Daryll-Ann this is not the case, they are equally great,
so no problem there. There are two unique musical jewels in the band’s crown
and they are what above all else make the band so magical.
Ann Soldaat is a
brilliant guitarist, a true great, magnificent beyond words. And the other
jewel is Jelle’s voice. While Ann is a perfectly excellent lead singer, as is
Jelle’s brother Coen, neither has that extra special natural quality that
Jelle’s voice has. That warm honey perfection that can only be gifted by luck
and nothing more. While I would not have a problem with Ann electing to sing
his own songs on a new Daryll-Ann album, if I could choose then I would want
Jelle to sing them all. Not because
Ann’s voice isn’t good but because Jelle’s is sooo good, not just by comparison
to Ann’s but by comparison to 99% of all singers out there. It truly is a
jewel.
Now just plonk the five down in a studio and say, don’t just
make music, become Daryll-Ann again and make the music that only the band can. By all means put yourselves first on your own albums, but always put Daryll-Ann first on a band album. That is how Weeps happened and that is how it
could be again if you become less selfish and more selfless in your love for
Daryll Ann again. That’s my thoughts on the subject anyway.
