Dark Dark Dark... and queer

Dark Dark Dark
8 p.m. Oct. 27
The Bakery Loft
4300 W. Vernor Highway, Detroit
http://www.brightbrightbright.com
You're not the only one reading this, because so is Marshall LaCount. He likes to know who's writing what about him and his psychedelic-folk band Dark Dark Dark, so he has Google Alert on the group. Just the other day, he found out they're getting gay ink – finally.
"It's so exciting for us to not be stuck in the 'straight' indie-rock publicity scene, and it's true at all of our shows that we're somewhere between indie rock and the queer community," says LaCount, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for the Minneapolis-based band, which just landed some glowing write-ups in gay publications for their second full-length, "Wild Go."
To promote the project, Dark Dark Dark performs at 8 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Bakery Loft in Detroit – and this is how much they love you: "If the queer community doesn't feel comfortable coming to certain venues or being among certain attitudes then we just won't do it," LaCount assures. "We've spent pretty much our whole lifespan as a band making decisions like that, where everyone has to feel welcome and it has to be a safe space for everyone."
The band members' own sexual identities give them more reason to perform in progressive rooms: LaCount, along with fellow lead singer Nona Marie Invie, is queer (because, he says, bisexual is limiting); while accordionist Walter McClements is, LaCount notes, "our gay man." Straights are among them, too: celloist Jonathan Kaiser, bass player Todd Chandler and Brett Bullion on percussion. Three of them – LaCount, Invie and Bullion – will appear locally, as the band truncates due to everyone's crazy schedules.
"The three of us will be able to have something equally as special as the six of us," LaCount says. "It'll just have to be adjusted slightly; the intimate version can be just as powerful as the big version."
But they've been small before: A year before the band became a sextet, it was just Invie and LaCount, who met each other when Invie caught LaCount's then-band at a Minneapolis café five years ago, a year before Dark Dark Dark swelled to six. "She was kind of an excited young person and I was an excited young person too," he recalls.
He hit on her, didn't he?
"Oh no," he says. "Although that might make for a better story if I could really work that."
One angle's already there, and true: the gay one, which his publicity firm wasn't sure how to spin, he says, even though it was obvious to them: "We're around gay people and the trans community and the queer community all over the country, all the time."
Dark Dark Dark spends so much time on the road, hanging out all over the world, that LaCount's only been home to the Twin Cities for a few weeks since March. They're regulars at Idapalooza Fruit Jam, a queer music festival in Tennessee where there's "so many freaks in the middle of the mountains," he says. The band's no stranger to Michigan either, having visited Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Saginaw – where they ran into the bookers who slated them for the Bakery gig.
Since forming, the road's been their friend – and a jump-off point for their music, where they're granted copious amounts of inspiration, from landscapes to people, to pull from. Look no further than the video for "Daydreaming," the wistful first single from "Wild Go," and their nomadic influences take hold: a marching band drums in a run-down field, cars zoom across interstates, and Invie's in a parking lot, playing piano and singing with passionate fervor.
The rest of "Wild Go" – recorded in studios, along with a renovated church and landmark theater, in Minneapolis – has a similar cinematic vibe that's more unified than their debut, 2008's "The Snow Magic," which LaCount says was basically just their first 13 recordings thrown on an album with less attention paid to arrangements and editing. Lush, layered and whimsical, this 10-song album – following an EP, "Bright Bright Bright," released earlier this year – is infiltrated with Americana, Eastern European folk and New Orleans jazz sounds. Soundtracks were also particularly influential on "Wild Go," with score-makers Philip Glass and Nico Muhly perched on LaCount's mind during the record's conception.
There were others, too. "Oh, weird, I'm coming up with all these cowboy ones right now," he says. "But the other one I thought of immediately was the soundtrack for 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,' which is absolutely amazing."
Based around an apocalyptic narrative, "Wild Go" is an emotional work of breathtaking proportions; "Robert" is a crushing elegy and the lovelorn "Nobody Knows" is the "song of a sorry gal." Dark dark dark, but not intentionally so.
"I wasn't aware that's what was happening necessarily," LaCount says. "We weren't doing it on purpose, but I think that's what I'm becoming aware of. Hopefully it's not all dark and depressing."
Only mostly.