By Ron Evans
Local goth ghouls of the night, Datura are gearing up to release their second LP, Songs From A Dark House on April 18. The trio has been working on the songs over the past couple of years as they have played shows in support of the first LP, Arcano Chemical (2022). Both records are on the Sell The Heart Records label and Bat Cave in Poland. The overall tone of the new album has a bit more of an upbeat danceability to it, says bassist Jake St. John. “Which is somewhat ironic when you consider that the three of us were in a pretty dark place while we were working on it.” He continues. More on that darkness in a bit.
The album starts with “Tired,” the first single released ahead of the official LP launch. One of my favorite things about this band is their ability to sound new and authentic while also delivering a sense of nostalgia and a deep respect for the pioneers of the goth/post-punk world. You can’t help but tap along to this Smiths-esque tune, in spite of the fact that it’s literally a song about being tired.
And while St. John’s assessment about the album being more danceable and upbeat is true, that’s not to say that Songs From A Dark House is a fun romp of lighthearted happenings. This is still Datura. There’s just a little extra snappiness to the darkness. Goth has long been an underappreciated style of dance music, but dancing is an integral part of the genre. The production of this album is also a bit brighter than the previous LP, both recorded and mixed by Chad Yenney and mastered by Tad Doyle.
At this point I think my favorite track on the album is “Nobody Cares” which features some catchy harmonies from Betancourt. I love that he seems to be experimenting more with that on this album, adding to the whole sing-along-ness.
Another thing I was happy to see was more songs in Spanish (“Sirena,” “Scarecrow”) which adds another layer of depth to the LP. The overall running time for Songs From A Dark House is a fast-moving 35 minutes, which is just enough to sink your vampire teeth into but leaves no time for fucking about.
Another favorite is “Shooting up In A Bouncy House,” and not just because of that amazing title. St. John’s infectious bass line is almost reminiscent of the funk/disco groove of ELO’s “Last Train To London” which demands at least a little head bobbin,’ a la Night At The Roxbury. But the heavy lyrics keep the party on terra firma.
The album ends with “War,” their second single. This track has what I would call a pleasantly nauseating aura to it. It’s droney, industrial and sparse. And the lyrics (while clearly based on historical atrocities) are tragically timely. When I heard the single, I liked it. But it didn’t resonate with me on the deeper level that it did after hearing it as the curtain call to the entire album. A thick, murky fog of bass (St. John crushes it on this album) pulses along to Tiffany’s drums, which are both a marching beat and a firing machine gun. Betancourt’s furious vocals fade further and further into the mix like a battlecry being drowned out by the chaos of war itself. It’s a brilliant closer. It offers no comfort. No resolve. It’s cold and literal and angry---and then...it fades into the ether. In the post-listen silence I sat there and thought two things…
We are fucked as a society.
I’m dying to see what the third album will sound like.
I sat down with the band to chat about the inspiration, the songwriting and the tragedies that led to Songs From A Dark House. Also joining us was KC St. John, band photographer and designer for the cover.
So I just heard the new single, “War.”
Jake: We almost didn’t release that as a single.
Why not? Seems like the perfect time for it.
Jake: Sadly, yes it is the perfect time. But we feel that there’s a lot of strong songs on the record. We talked about it though and we just didn’t want it to get lost, being the last song on the album.
Tiffany: If we hadn’t released it right now it wouldn’t likely have the same impact.
So you guys are signed with Sell The Heart Records, do they have any input on what you do? What singles to push, etc.? Recording or release schedule?
Jake: No, they’re happy to just let us do what we want, really.
Where did you record this new LP?
Jake: We recorded with Chad (Yenney) again.
He moved away, he’s now in the Olympia area yeah?
Jake: Yeah, not too far from there. We recorded it over one long weekend. Like around 33 hours.
So you must have had everything pretty much dialed in – or was there room for evolving certain songs in the studio?
David: We actually did change some things, there were some evolutions. Tiffany busted out the percussion parts for “War” in the studio, we wrote some synthesizer parts in there. We were even still writing lyrics.
Tiffany: Yeah we all wrote lyrics for “War.”
David: Usually when we practice, I’ll just be kind of vocalizing the idea. And sometimes it just comes naturally. Sometimes I’m just like, oh, well, this can change. But yeah, with “War” we wrote that together in the studio with Chad’s help too. We kind of already had the idea of what the song was about, leaving it to just basically be dialed down in the studio.
Is that fairly typical of the band to leave a little wiggle room in the studio?
Tiffany: Not really, on the last record we had rehearsed so much, for like three months. I was playing with a metronome in my ear getting everything as dialed in as I could.
Jake: “War” was kind of nebulous, there’s not a lot to that song. We knew we wanted it to have a long kind of noise section at the end, and we knew we wanted it to be about war. And so we had played around with some experiments in the rehearsal space, but we decided to not finish any of that stuff or make any final decisions before we went into the studio. So we did it in one take, and we just played out for as long as we felt we needed to. Then we stopped and we’re like…okay, now we’ve got all this sonic territory to tell a story with.
Who is the primary lyricist?
Jake: David, for sure.
So is it unusual to all contribute to the lyrics?
David: It pops up from time to time. On our first EP, Orphans, Jake and I combined forces while writing “Ghost or Reflection.” “Our Ship is Lost” and “Everything Turns Black” were all Jake.
Talk about overall recording process in Chad’s new studio. Was it a significant change from the old setup?
Jake: Yeah, it’s completely different. He has a nice large room for sound, and because it sounded different from the old space that sort of forced us to change how we recorded it. There’s a lot less going on with this album. We didn’t really do any guitar overdubs, not many doubled vocals.
David: It sounds bassier, ballsier and I think it sounds more confident. I know vocally I was more confident on this album.
How long after Arcano Chemical did you start working on these new songs?
Jake: Some of them we had kicking around even going back to when we recorded Arcano. David originally wrote “Scarecrow” as a SHANX FM (Betancourt’s other project) track.
Tiffany: But we told him it’s a better Datura song!
They all laugh.
Does that happen? Do they steal your songs, David?
David: It has happened, but it eventually made more sense to me too.
Jake: We had to really convince him to make that a Datura song. We broke him down, finally!
Do you record much of the record live, like all together? How do you typically lay down the tracks?
Tiffany: Well I showed up early so I could have time to set up my drum kit, get it dialed in and miked up. I’ll get playing to a click track — and they are often playing along, like just doing a scratch track. Just to keep me on pace and I have to fade in and out of focusing on them and then back to the click. Because I’ve found that sometimes I just get playing with them and then I get off on the click. And later they will do their final parts separately when the drums are down.
David: What’s kind of funny is that sometimes, we’ll write our own parts for the guitar and for the bass but then when we hear it back, we didn’t realize how difficult it is to get those chords really clear. So you have to modify or come up with a different thing because you’re just now seeing that it doesn’t all quite work together.
Jake: Yeah, sometimes you even have to change the tempo or the rhythm and that can be enough.
Was there any intent to make the record different from the last, stylistically? Or was that all organically happening?
Tiffany: I think it was pretty organic. We were all going through a lot of shit over the last year, personally.
Jake: Yeah. There was a lot. I think we had talked about doing something a bit darker. But, ironically—the thing ended up being a bit brighter and upbeat. Musically, anyway. I was listening to a lot of R&B, getting into a bit more funk and I wanted to incorporate that into my basslines. A bit dancier.
Can I ask about the shit you were going through to inspire the album?
Jake: My dad was battling cancer while we were writing the record and he actually passed away while we were still writing. That was an intense experience. And we had been looking for a title for the album and I was feeling all these things, dealing with my dad’s passing. It was like…the lights were just shut off. So, Songs From A Dark House is just exactly how it felt. The cover photos are really special. KC can talk about that.
KC: There’s three characters, and then there’s the kind of bunny rabbit with kids. See video above. Those are from two separate photos from 1957, I believe, and it was Christmas performances that Jake’s dad was in. So his family had these photos from those two events. And while we were at Jake’s dad’s house, and the family was all there, I came across those photos. They just kind of hit me, and I showed them to Jake. I don’t think we had the title of the album at that point, and we didn’t really necessarily think this is going to be part of the album art, but we had it as an idea. And I started playing around with them and when Jake came up with the title it felt like…this just had to be part of the album art.
Had you ever seen those photos before?
Jake: Never. And like KC said, they just kinda hit you. And it pulls out all this emotion for me, of course. But it also has this sort of pairing of the dark and the somewhat…playful, I would say. Just like the lyrics on the album can get fairly dark and heavy but the music is more fun and playful. At times.
So if this dark and heavy time brought out somewhat happier music, does that mean you were all happier when you made the darker Arcano Chemical?
They all laugh and say ‘no’ simultaneously.
David: I was in a pretty bad place when we made that. I was having a hard time working through my sadness and anger while working on that record. I feel like I’ve had a lot of growth since then and I didn’t wanna go down those roads again. Because it sucked. But the thing is, the lyrics aren’t always 100% about me personally. Sometimes you just write some lyrics that speak to you – lyrics that are fun to pair with this kind of music. So, just in case anyone was wondering—I’m not that fucked up.
Jake: There’s a song called “Shooting Up In A Bouncy House.” It’s about addiction but…it’s this hilarious fucking title. It’s about this sort of gleeful self-destruction. David wrote a set of lyrics and I wrote a set of lyrics. We ended up putting David’s version on the record. But yeah, that’s the kind of place we created with this album.
Will we see a b-side release of the alternate lyrics?
Jake: Maybe. It’s kinda funny. We don’t really have any b-sides. Only hits!
We all laugh.
So you have an all ages show coming up April 25 at the IOOF. Will you have records and CDs by then?
Jake: Yep, we plan on bringing a whole pile of good stuff to the IOOF. And soon we will be heading out on tour. We just got a new van we’re stoked about. We will be playing Portland, Sacramento, LA, San Diego, Vegas. We did a tour once before but we used my mom’s little car, which was hilarious. Just this fucking clown car with tons of gear and all of us crammed into it. It was a sight to see.
But now you have a real touring van. You have arrived.
Jake: We have finally arrived.
Songs From A Dark House drops April 18. You’ll be able to get it on their Bandcamp page and most streaming apps.
Better yet, grab it on vinyl at the release show April 25 at the IOOF in Wenatchee. Swear and Not All There will be kicking things off around 7pm. All ages show.