That's frontwoman Nona Marie Invie naked on the cover of Dark Dark Dark's second full-length, Wild Go, her back to the camera and her face turned toward the viewer with a subtle scowl. Simultaneously defensive and defiant, she seems to rebuke you for seeing her in this state of undress, hips and tattoos exposed. We get other band members' asses, too, but Invie's is front and center, which is only appropriate: The band's songs are cleverly arranged and expressively performed, but Invie's vocals remain the focal point. While it's tempting to suggest she lays herself similarly bare in her lyrics, in truth she is slightly more guarded, writing songs whose meanings must be puzzled out and singing them in a voice that sounds refracted, as if we're hearing her through a mirror.
Invie's an intriguing presence on Wild Go, which traffics in pristine, moody chamber pop that's light on hooks but heavy on stark atmosphere. Working with producer Tom Herbers (Low) in Minneapolis and Duluth, the band itself proves agile and inventive, opening "In Your Dreams" at an abrupt gallop, rushing us into the album in medias res as the members provide backing vocals that sound like a Balkan choir practicing next door. There are hints of Beirut in "Celebrate", of an artier Hem in "Daydreaming", of a less wild Wild Colonials in "Say the Word", of chanson on the title track, and perhaps Dark Dark Dark's true accomplishment here is how they mix sounds and influences so effortlessly. They comprise a tight, intuitive unit, especially when the instruments swirl together into an otherworldly eddy of sound. They even know enough to back off the spectral "Robert", which is mostly Invie at her piano.
"What do words mean to me now?" she asks on "Say the Word", possibly explaining the cumbersome band name and awkward album title. She never lets on which words she's talking about or what they might have meant in the past; as with the album cover, she knows that the glimpse of a part is more engrossing than a gawk at the whole. Occasionally, the songs threaten to blur together and lose their distinctiveness, yet she makes Wild Go sound tough-minded and questioning. That makes it only more egregious when banjo and clarinet player Marshall LaCount takes over vocals from her on "Right Path" and "Heavy Heart". He has a thin, slightly reedy voice and a tendency toward overenunciation; it's not unpleasant, but relatively pedestrian. Moreover, in the context of the album it's disruptive, breaking the careful spell of the music. The band works via accumulation, gradually building up to moments of muted drama, yet LaCount's leads wreck that momentum.
