Local indie-rockers The Darcys toiled for three years on their new album. So, now that they've signed with Arts & Crafts, why are they giving it away for free?
At first, the story of The Darcys sounds like a tale plucked from the little book of indie-rock nightmares: star-crossed local band toils away for three years, spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on the painstaking creation of what should be their star-making album, and the money they ultimately pocket off it hovers somewhere around zero.
The Toronto-based band’s tumultuous backstory has been well documented in the local press, from promising beginnings as an upstart five-piece, to the unexpected departure of their singer that completely derailed their momentum, to the sophomore album they were forced to re-record without him.
The majority of The Darcys’ trials and tribulations were tied up in the spectre of this second album, a collection of songs that was recorded and re-recorded and tweaked and pushed back so many times it’s acquired a near-mythical legacy—the Chinese Democracy of West Queen West, you might say.
The album, at one time titled Young Believers , but now simply self-titled, might easily have been abandoned in favour of new songs after the band nearly fell apart in early 2010. Instead, they regrouped with their producer, The Dears’ frontman Murray Lightburn, who in turn brought in engineer/mixer Dave Schiffman for what turned out to be another year of on-and-off work on the project. Somehow, they rescued the record and got it done, once and for all. A few choice showcases later, the band landed on the radar of Arts & Crafts , and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.
Yet within this story of survival is a bizarre case study in today’s music-industry economics. The Darcys aren’t like so many luckless unsigned outfits out there, armed with nothing but a .zip file of shitty home demos buried somewhere in the Tumblr tundra; they’re backed by the city’s most powerful indie label. Yet, they’ve still chosen give the album away for free—and they couldn’t be more thrilled about it.
But why exactly, have three years of blood, sweat and tears culminated in a mere digital-download link on their official website ?
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For drummer Wes Marskell, the album’s unorthodox release strategy is designed not to line their pockets, but to raise their profile.
“The record has become so much bigger than the recordings because of what we went through,” he says. “A traditional release seemed silly for us. For a label like Arts & Crafts to give the record away for free, it seemed like we would get it into the hands of more people than a band who puts out a record for $15 and hopes people buy it.”
With thousands of downloads flooding hard drives the world over in the two weeks since the album’s release, and a nearly sold-out headlining show this Friday (Nov. 18) at the Horseshoe, it’s hard to argue that the tactic hasn’t been effective. Marskell is also right to note that, given the band’s low profile, it would be a challenge for the casual listener to find the album and illegally download it, even if they wanted to.
However, financially speaking, the decision seems like more of a questionable call on the part of the record label, who are traditionally in the business of, you know, selling records for money. It’s interesting that Arts & Crafts co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Remedios was compelled to write an accompanying manifesto on the Arts & Crafts blog detailing the motivations behind the company’s decision to release their first free album. Over the phone, he explains it’s an opportunity granted by insanely low overhead costs.
“By the time we got involved with them, they came to us with two records done and a third in the works,” he says. “It’s a pretty unique position to be in when you have a band with a significant amount of unreleased material, and you’re building them effectively from the ground. That afforded us some luxury with how we approach this.”
The second completed record he’s talking about is a curveball “art project” that’s apparently so mysterious no one involved can even talk about it just yet. It’s currently slated to drop early next year.
But further questions about what’s to come reveal that Marskell and Remedios talk about the self-titled album in remarkably similar terms: they’re proud of it, sure, but they seem decidedly more excited about the records that lie ahead.
“I’ve come to think of this release as a robust single, a first offering,” Marskell says. “And the third record is the one that in my opinion will be the Darcys record. It’s a way of building so that by the time that third record comes out, we’ll have the audience there for it.”
And there lies the true virtue of the free album. It’s a foundation for career-building, what Remedios calls “a longer-term bet.” He also sees it as a tool designed to cut through the clutter of the internet.
“The biggest day in an artist’s life is the release of the record, and we’ve seen this trend lately where you spend 18 months to two years working on a record and then the next day, it’s effectively over. People are moving on.”
He’s absolutely right. This year alone we’ve seen new albums by traditional rock powerhouses (Radiohead, The Strokes and Death Cab for Cutie spring to mind) effectively glide into the ether after only a few days on the Trending Topics list. (Oddly, the local artist to gain the most traction in music-discussion circles was the one who gave his album away for free and refused to even talk about it—Toronto’s frustratingly mysterious R&B star The Weeknd .)
Couple our reduced attention span with the rapidly improving sound quality of home recordings, and we could be approaching a time when every debut album arrives in your download bin absolutely free. Remedios says that day isn’t far off.
“Two and a half years down the road, we’re going to be there. With streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, it’s almost like your cable bill— you can stream anything you want whenever you want. We’re going to get to a point where storage capacities will get so large that people will be able to walk around with all of the world’s copyrighted digital material on a little drive.”
That’s the kind of heavy, futuristic thought that suggests music will soon become something you own all of and none of at the same time. That’s when Remedios conveniently reminds us that, if you’re really desperate to take home a little piece of The Darcys, you can. And it comes on vinyl.
“The first vinyl pressing is sold out,” he says. “We’re onto the second pressing, and the attention the band has garnered has already started to go beyond what I think would have occurred if we’d just traditionally released this record and tried to work it on a regular album cycle.”
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, The Darcys doesn’t come in a CD version. (“I think CDs are for the car now?” Marskell muses.) Because certainly, pressing a bunch of those useless things would be such a waste of valuable time.
