Saturday Night

Saturday Night, the first proper solo album from Tim Darcy (Ought), comes from one of those crossroads-type moments in life where one has to walk to the edge before knowing which way to proceed. Each track is woven to the next in a winding, complex journey through a charged, continuous present. There are love/love lost songs like the standout, almost-New Wave "Still Waking Up" in which a Smiths-esque melody builds upon an underbrush that recalls 60s AM pop and country. Darcy's unmistakable, commanding voice and lyrical phrasing are, as they are in Ought, an instrument here: vital to the entire affair. There's a line in "Tall Glass of Water," the album's Velvet Underground-nodding opening track, where Darcy asks himself a rhetorical question: "if at the end of the river, there is more river, would you dare to swim again?" He barely pauses before the answer: "Yes, surely I will stay, and I am not afraid. I went under once, I'll go under once again." That river shows up again and again in the lyrics of Saturday Night. It's about how wonderful it can be to feel in touch with that inner current. It's about how good it feels to make art, and how terrifying; how you don't always get to choose whether you're swimming or drowning as we grow and move through life, just that you're going to keep diving in. That's the impulse that links all the songs on Saturday Night, makes them glow.

On this unsettled solo album, Ought frontman Tim Darcy slowly dismantles the confessional crooner archetype, transforming himself from singer-songwriter to sound sculptor.

Tim Darcy is no stranger to introspection. As the singer/guitarist of exuberant Montréal-based art-punk quartet Ought, he's wrought thoughtf...

As frontman of the Montreal post-punk band Ought, Tim Darcy often channels eccentrics like David Byrne and Isaac Brock.

Tim Darcy, we are told, had reached an impasse. Lead singer with the really-rather-superb Montreal group Ought, he knew that a change was needed, a

Frontman with Ought, the prolific Tim Darcy has made a debut solo album 'Saturday Night' that's both laid-back and raucous.

'Saturday Night' by Tim Darcy, album review by Gregory Adams. The full-length comes out on February 17 on Jagjaguwar. Tim Darcy, plays 2/15 in New York City