Delta Dart
Fight Or Flight
Paroxysm
“You’re worse than a frat party, at least they don’t pretend to be my fuckin’ friend.” Classic. This lovely observation comes from the first song on Fight Or Flight by Delta Dart, entitled “PunkRock-icity.” The ladies of Delta Dart play some of the most emotionally charged music I have ever heard in my life; this isn’t Dashboard Confessional-style emotion (that is, simply going through the motions of “emo”-ness to sell records); these girls get so into the music that I can actually get goose bumps when listening to Fight Or Flight. With that being said, Fight Or Flight is best release of 2002, so far, of any genre.
“Middle Name” finds the ladies sounding exhausted by the end, repeating “we think we’re so strong” after a series of words to someone met at a party, in which it’s pointed out that they should meet during the day. I’ve always been bad at critiquing lyrical content, so I’ll try to do it as little as possible here. Lyrically, though, Delta Dart actually take lines from other songs and throw them into their own (among the lyricists taken from: The Cure & Madonna!); the thing is, the way the girls sing and perform, they totally claim the words as their own so convincingly that it’s obvious that no plagiarism has taken place. New meaning has been put into old lyrics, and the way these guys do it is fascinating.
Instrumentation-wise, the band plays about half acoustic and half electric songs, the acoustic ones sounding somewhat like PJ Harvey might sound, if she were an acoustic singer. The electric songs sound very similar to DC darlings Slant 6 and Autoclave. The fantastic musicianship shown on Fight Or Flight is breath-taking, as are the girls’ voices.
As stated before, this is my favorite release of 2002. I could ramble on for hours about how good these guys are, but I won’t. Instead I’ll refer you to an interview with Delta Dart that I did a few weeks ago. Simply put, I love Fight Or Flight!
Paroxysm Records: http://www.paroxysmrecords.com
