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“Tall Glass of Water”

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  • Genre:

    Rock

  • Label:

    Jagjaguwar

  • Reviewed:

    December 6, 2016

From his upcoming album Saturday Night

As the frontman of Ought, Tim Darcy has approached his band’s take on post-punk with an almost surgical precision. Over the band’s angular, taut guitar riffs, Darcy delivers compact couplets with a feeling of revelation, even when the words are only understood by him.

“Tall Glass of Water,” from Darcy’s upcoming solo record Saturday Night, is the sound of that tightness unraveling. Darcy’s lyrics are given room to expand, and he takes the opportunity to get philosophical about persevering through life: “And if at the end of the river, there is more river, would you dare to swim again?” as he puts it, over the steady guitar chug of an artist who’s clearly spent lots of time with the early Velvet Underground records. Darcy is immediately there with an affirmative “Yes surely I will stay, and I am not afraid,” and yet he keeps asking variations of the question again and again. As a choir comes in for the song’s last lyric—“Would you chance it all again?”—Darcy sounds aware that the questions are bigger than himself.