Largely recorded at home to four-track cassette, Fantasia Ball is a trembling confession murmured to shadows, sighed from the psyche, and hummed in harmony to silence. To speak of records as therapy conjures all the wrong associations, but like the deepest therapy, the deepest music can be an utterly personal investigation.
While mostly avoiding righteous anger and eviscerating rock rhythms, these ten originals (plus a delicate cover of the Stones Blue Turns To Grey) find a close cognate in the chilling exorcism of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. That album was a primal scream; Darbys is a primal whisper. Mother, isolation, anguish, fear, and the uncensored honesty that alone purges those ghosts thats the common ground of their private calling.
But Fantasia Ball finds more than interior spaces and casts more than black light. Though far too spare to be called pop, Summer nearly skips along to the bops of background voices. On If It Feels Good, Darby asks, Havent you spent long enough in the shadow of your self?
The music has its own reply: Starting with lo-fi vocals and lightly plucked electric guitar, Darby adds cello, keys, and bass, in layer after uncanny layer, building a kind of cathedral minimalism thats always more than atmosphere. Fantasia Ball may feel like a testament to fragility, but theres great strength in the quiet risks it takes.