Tim Darcy: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Bob Boilen | May 15, 2017 — Tim Darcy has a gifted voice, with a delivery that triggers the Lou Reed and Roy Orbison pleasure centers of my brain. The words he delivers are mysterious and mellifluous, playing in my mind’s ear long after his newest album, Saturday Night — so named because it was mostly recorded on the weekends in the midst of making his other band’s second album — comes to its close. While this new batch of songs don’t fit the brashness of Darcy’s band Ought, there are plenty of rough-hewn edges here. He told me in an email that he is “not the songwriter of Ought,“ but “one of four,“ and that he “felt a strong need to get outside of the collaborative and get back to my roots in my own voice.“ Darcy grew up in Arizona writing poetry as a kid, eventually making his way to Colorado, then New Hampshire, before falling creatively into a life in Montreal. In addition to two tracks from Saturday Night, there’s a new, unreleased song here — “What’d You Release?“ — with Darcy joined by Toronto songwr