Darkswoon – “Antivenom”

Darkswoon is a Portland three-piece. Jana Cushman handles vocals and guitar, Norah Lynn plays bass, and Rachel Ellis runs the electronics and beats. Antivenom is their third album. If you’ve never come across them before, they sit somewhere in the darkwave, post-punk, shoegaze space. Not in a way that sounds like a genre exercise. More like a band that absorbed all of that and made it their own.

The production runs on hardware electronics, which gives the record a cold edge. But it doesn’t feel distant. A lot of that is Cushman’s vocals, high and floating, the kind that make the harder-hitting parts of the album easier to stay with. Norah Lynn’s bass playing is melodic and has real grit at the same time. Ellis keeps the rhythms propulsive.

“Thread” is the first single and it’s my favorite. Worth hearing before you go in on the full thing. The rest of the tracklist, nine tracks total, covers a lot of emotional ground. Loss, fear, inequality, things left unresolved. Cushman doesn’t ease you into any of it. The album is out now on clear vinyl with pink and white splatter and on CD through their Bandcamp. UK and EU preorders are available there too. West Coast tour dates are coming in mid-June.

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