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Diana Darby | Naked Time

CD, Delmore/E-Squared

Tekst: Maurice Dielemans

Publicatiedatum: 11 februari 2001

If you enjoy the introspective, breathy, imaginative, and mysterious music of such artists as Nick Drake, Patti Smith, Beth Orton, and Leonard Cohen with a touch of twang, Diana Darby's 'Naked Time' is what you have been waiting to discover.
Listening to this album with sympathetically bleak arrangements, it feels just like Diana Darby is right behind you whispering in your ears with an angel's voice. She is arriving out of nowhere, but Diana Darby's quiet voice and touching lyrics will catch you from the very first notes of 'June Bug'. This opening gem is only a promise of even better to come.
Not unusual for albums, the second track ('Sarah') is a favourite of mine and outstanding, the line "whoever told you life is fair" pulsing through a haunted song of lost love and loneliness set against a backdrop of a late summer evening's porch-sitting under a Western sky. The stillness in Diana's poetry and voice could not have been more plain and pure as it is here on 'Naked Time'.
What an impressive debut album, but keep in my mind that not many artists can come up with something at least this good a second time. Wait and see, because I really do believe that all of this is very promising, and Diana Darby is here to stay as long as people care for good music like this.
Although there is some slide guitar and even some pedal steel as well, most of the compositions on her album are basically very spare with a dark edginess, but that's what makes this album so hauntingly beautiful. There is only one grungy song like 'She Won't Be Quiet' that will leave you wondering, because it's a 180-degree turn from the late-evening melancholy whisperings of all the other tunes on 'Naked Time'. Oh well, 'She Won't Be Quiet' is the only song with a harder-rocking edge to it, and although slightly confusing and less memorable, it doesn't really affect the fragile beauty of 'Naked Time', and it certainly isn't an attempt to turn Diana Darby into a Top 40 act.
Let's just face it, with such haunting songs in both melodies and lyrics, this is the kind of debut album any musician can only dream of making.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/diana-darby/naked-time/73/
Meer Diana Darby op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/diana-darby