Darcy Ought

In light of the death of The Fall’s iconic frontman Mark E. Smith a couple months back, I immediately began to look at which musical acts today continue to reap the benefits of his brand of politically-charged, disillusioned post-punk. From New York’s Parquet Courts to Canada’s own Preoccupations (Formerly Viet Cong), themes of isolation and alienation in the digital age continue to prevail. But it’s Montreal’s Ought that continues to take Smith’s influence to unforeseen heights both musically and sonically. The mastermind behind Ought’s growing name is none other than the ever-charming and soft-spoken Tim Darcy.

While Darcy himself adamantly credits the band’s astonishing new record Room Inside the World as “a concerted effort” in a phone

“I think about lyrics like a poem. I’ve been writing poetry for longer than I’ve been playing music.”

With this mindset, there’s abstraction and density behind each and every word uttered by Darcy— a quality that few lyricists have or will ever possess. Nevertheless, Darcy admits to “being quite verbose” in the past. So with the band’s latest record, Darcy made it a goal of his to “not cram in as many lyrics and write in a much more calculated way, said Darcy. “There are songs [on Room Inside the World] where what I am singing about is obvious and less lyric heavy…[Melody] is what I’m thinking about first and foremost and so I tried to bend words around that.

Aside from Darcy’s remarkable ability as a modern day, poetic genius, the Ought frontman continues to wield his dynamic voice of sobriety as the band’s catch-all. With vocal work that has stood out for possessing a nervous energy that many continue to compare to David Byrne’s, Room Inside the World,” encounters Darcy far more melodic and somber, almost reminiscent of Scott Walker. Now, while the change in vocal delivery may be “new” to some listeners, Darcy points to the band’s debut EP as the first signs of him “singing.” So why the decision to revert to this more melodic