Dark Mean

Hee hee, lookit the monkey! :D

When playwright Rebecca Nada-Rajah needed a soundtrack for her production of "The Constant K Determines the Ultimate Fate of the Universe", lifelong friends Billy, Sandy and Mark got together as the Hamilton-based Dark Mean. They wrote and performed, and now a year later, they're working on their first full-length release. It'll be appropriately titled after the play that fueled their formation.

The album will be a compilation of three EPs, the first of which has a monkey on the cover and is called frankencottage. Aren't you already charmed?

Dark Mean - Happy Banjo (mp3) (iTunes)
Dark Mean - frankencottage (mp3) (iTunes)

And that is indeed quite a happy banjo on the first track of their first EP. The happiest of banjos I've heard in a while, dare I say. The banjo may or may not have been paying attention to the slightly darker overtones of the lyrics. You can hear the entire frankencottage EP over at their mySpace, or you can download it for free off their official website. So do yourself a favour and go get 'em!

It's definitely a strong start for the trio. It's kind of pop, and kind of folk, and kind of reminds you that Canada is THE place for indie music. We've got happy banjos and monkeys on our album art, fuck yeah! I'm looking forward to the next two EPs which they say will be released over the next year or so. They plan to be finished the second of the set by the end of this summer. Dark Mean does joke that their band's evolutionary process has "the pace of a critically-ill snail", but I'm predicting that it'll be well worth the wait.

Dark Mean will be playing a free show at Sunrise Records on Yonge and Dundas in Toronto on June 19th at 6PM. Woot! I was planning to be in the area anyway because of In-Flight Safety, The Cliks and Wintersleep playing Yonge and Dundas Square later into the night for NXNE. Fantastic!

And look! More monkeys!