Darius Koski, longtime vocalist/gutiarist and co-founder of San Francisco punk band Swingin’ Utters, has finally taken that narrow, dusty, lonesome path that leads away from the wider, busier, noisier road of punk to write and record his debut solo album of folk and country songs. Titled Sisu, this record is decidedly an example of when punk artists try for more stripped-down acoustic styles of songwriting and manage to do it remarkably well. There is a reason for that in this case, however. According to Koski, he has been writing songs like these for as long as he has been writing his own songs, and he actually has more in this style than he does punk rock songs. But if people think that they are going to just get your average folk and country offering in Sisu, they are hugely mistaken. That is to say, Sisu features a broad range of organic music, from country (“Fond of, Lost To,” “Listen!”, “Do Nothin'”), folk (“The Sound of Waves,” “So Help Me,” “Everybody Leaves”), ragtime-like uke-folk (“On Leaving”), rockabilly (“Show Me the Way,” “Tension Tank”), gypsy folk (“Paper Tigers, Plastic Lions”), garage-y acousti-punk (“Howls from the Gale”), and so on.
Check out this video for “On Leaving” from Darius Koski’s Sisu. This song features ukulele by Spike Slawson (Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Re-Volts, and Uke Hunt).
Koski’s Sisu follows the Swingin’ Utters’ latest full-length, Fistful of Hollow, which was released in November of 2014 and was the band’s first release in eight years. Both albums are available at the Fat Wreck Chords webstore.