The Black Swans - Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You?

Genre folk Publisher Delmore records External Links Official Site

If you are watching a movie that captivates you from beginning to end, the crying child three rows behind you will go completely unnoticed. If you are out to dinner and having the most amazing conversations, the horrible service might be forgivable. However, if you are listening to an album that has one disastrous song after another, even if you are plowing through it in a private Costa Rican resort with two beautiful women fanning you and another hand feeding you white chocolate-dipped strawberries sprinkled in coconut, chances are the album will never have any redeeming value. Such is the case with the miserable sound that will fill your ears for 43 minutes when listening to The Black Swans' Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You?

Let me say this, there is a violin that plays the same dour note the entire album and by the midpoint song of "The Raft," you are hoping for something to spring a leak and take you way down to the ocean floor where this sound can no longer penetrate. This violin becomes the aural equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, or someone talking to you with food stuck in their teeth, or the person that drives the speed limit in the left-hand lane. Get the point? The arrangements do not differ from track to track. A light guitar picking, drums being struck ever so softly, and the voice of Jerry DeCicca. I was trying to think of a way to describe DeCicca's voice as it is like nothing I've ever heard. The only comparison I came up with was Bullwinkle J. Moose on tranquilizers.

During the opener "Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You?" I thought that DeCicca was trying to capture some odd mood by singing that way. I was wrong. It is a laughably horrible voice that shows no hint of emotion. If the person delivering the message to the listener does so with no apparent meaning, the listener has no reason to feel anything at all. That is what this album left me with. This is the rare artistic statement that manages to state nothing at all. There is no redeeming value to this album. I cannot think of one circumstance where a human being would enjoy this album or be compelled to recommend this album to another human being. Unless, you're playing some kind of practical joke and tell you're buddy, "Hey, I know you are about to propose to your girlfriend, and have I got the mood setter for you!"

Nope, Who Will Walk in the Darkness With You? is an album to avoid at all costs. Don't waste the battery life of your iPod or portable disc player. For all I can leave you with is this: When my days on this Earth are over, and if it is determined for some reason I must spend eternity burning in the fires of Hell, The Black Swans will be the music I am condemned to listen to.