by Reggie Bender (@granolabrat)
Speckled with slacker anthems and folk charmers, Dark Tones’ Pulling Nails Out of Walls catalogues the loneliness, the pointlessness, and the weight of being an island. The record aims to make sense of one’s own solitude, or at least to sharpie “I WAS HERE” on the inside of a bathroom stall, just to prove one’s own existence in a city that fails to acknowledge the personal nature of the mundane. Sometimes funny, sometimes cutting, Pulling Nails moves through its eight songs with a resignation of wanting to be known, and being uncertain that it’s possible. When announcing this record, Dark Tones also shared the news that they will no longer be continuing this project. James Malzone (guitar, vocals) has acquired quite a reservoir of songs on Bandcamp over the past ten years or so. Pulling Nails Out of Walls presents us with the first full band effort of this project, this time including Chris Masih (bass) and Matt Elicone (drums), just in time to wave goodbye to the whole gang.
On Pulling Nails, Dark Tones have meticulously crafted a handful of songs that showcase the intimacy of an ever-rotating game of give and take. Malzone and Masih weave together their patchwork string parts, sometimes playing follow-the-leader on songs such as “Nails,” whereas on “Your Hair” Malzone opts to minimize his movement while Masih deepens the well. All the while, Elicone orbits them both, a sharpness directed forward in every hit. Their constant is motion--whether it be slamming the foot on the gas or the soft rise and fall of floating in a body of water.
The stone marked “loud-quiet-loud” has been turned over and over in our hands, but still it offers us the excitement of asking, “When is this thing gonna blow?” Dark Tones play between dormancy and eruption, both musically and in the strength of Malzone’s vocal delivery. Consciously or not, Malzone’s biggest asset is the intuitive idea that it matters what he is saying, but it matters more what he’s communicating. An appropriately timed yell on “Hydrant” or the unparalleled softness in the final verse of “Cat” cradles the root of the emotion, and lets it hook into the ground that the instrumentation has already carefully tilled.
In writing this, I wanted to eulogize as little as possible as the work stands on its own, but I will say this: I have seen Dark Tones play in some form at least twenty times over the past four years. Most of these full band shows have included the bulk (if not all) of the songs on this record, which have managed to ring in my ear for years before these songs were released. Whether it has been in an Allston basement rager so packed it should have been declared a fire hazard or a sloppy, mid-afternoon snooze-fest at a now defunct Brooklyn bar, Dark Tones has always managed to put on an inviting show. Free of ego, but never acting self-deprecating towards their efforts. The world turns, and things remain uncertain. I only hope that I can put the love, the care, and the fun back into the things I create the way that this band has. Dark Tones will be sorely missed.