The Darts are a Bulls-Eye to your External Auditory Meatus

My Sunday ritual starts with coffee, coffee, dash of baileys, recliner, headphones and Palmyra Delran's Trash-Pop Shindig on SiriusXM #21 followed by the walking encyclopaedia and spinner of the best R&R on the plant, Steven Van Zandt, and diggity dang doodle Chris Carter's British Invasion is a wealth of obscure tunes and insight. Anyhoo, I kept hearing these groovy retro grrls garage psych tunes and had to wrest myself from my recliner to get close to the device and see who it was making me shuffle and jimmy jam in my recliner and every time it was The Darts laying down some of the tastiest tunes I've heard in a very long time. The two Arizona desert gypsies, singer and keys player Nicole Laurenne, bassist and singer Christina Nunez and two LA streetwise vamps, drummer and singer Rikki Styxx, guitarist and singer Michelle Balderrama seemed destined to wreak havoc on the music scene, having formed just in 2016 they've melded like four spilt tubes of Gorilla glue with missing caps mixing it up with sticky grooves you have to peel off your ears.
Every song on their debut LP is a full onslaught of adrenaline released raw retro raunchy unadulterated shimmy and shaking rock and roll and if it doesn't have you swinging from a chandelier you probably need a defibrillator to shock you back to life.

Release Date: January 13th 2017 on Dirty Water Records. Put this record on your essential listening agenda. It will stick with you until your Best of 2017 List, Giddy up dang doodle!

“I’ve always wanted to an all-girl band, with bad ass girls that are awesome,” says singer Nicole Laurenne (who also plays keyboards) in The Darts. And the key there is “bad ass”. Because this ain’t elevator music. This band is more heavy and aggressive sounding than any of the ladies’ previous bands – which include ’60s garage revalists The Love Me Nots, Motobunny, Zero Zero (Nicole), The Two Tens, The Dollyrots, Thee Outta Sites (drumming singer Rikki Styxx), The Love Me Nots, Casual Encounters, The Madcaps (bassist/singer Christina  Nunez), Brainspoon (guitarist/singer Michelle Balderrama).

Christina will tell you clearly that, “The Darts are a little dirtier and little angrier than what we’ve done before.” But one has to ask, if guys were playing like this would it still be describe as “aggressive”? Maybe not. What this is, basically, is just good ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll, a little rough around the edges (as all good rock’n’roll ought to be), with a certain old-school punk feel and, most of all, a good time vibe.

 The band formed in early 2016 when, after watching each other’s bands from the sidelines for years, Arizona natives Nicole and Christina got the idea of writing some songs and making music together and recruited the other two members from down in Southern California. With six songs ready, Rikki and Michelle recorded their tracks in Los Angeles and then Nicole and Christina tracked their parts in Phoenix. Arizona producer Bob Hoag then masterfully stirred the mess together over a piping hot console resulting in masterful tunes full of garage riffs, girl-group harmonies, fuzz bass, Farfisa organ, pounding drum fills, and all-around lo-fi-turned-hi-fi goodness.

Their song “Take What I Need” powered its way into the rotation on Little Steven’s radio show, and proclaimed ‘Coolest Song in the World” and the band got a very glowing shout-out from Steven King via Twitter. After all that, they only played their first live show together in October 2016 and then signed to Dirty Water Records just a few short months later.

While The Darts offers a new creative outlet for the ladies, all are already seasoned musicians. Laurenne and Nunez are both veterans of the recently-disbanded Love Me Nots, Styxx has kept the beat with The Dollyrots and Balderrama is a member of the long-running Los Angeles band Brainspoon.

Check out My News Desk where the Grrrl's dish more insights and share a coupla songs and videos. The Darts (US): Phoenix-Los Angeles 'Grrrl Gang' Ready For Tour... - Dirty Water Records

The Darts are about to begin a nationwide tour that’ll keep them on the road through January; after a bit of a break they’ll return to touring in March. The Darts are touring across the southern states of the US in January 2017 with Oakland’s all-girl rock duo Steel Cranes, and then will be poised to invade Europe on tour in May where they will kick your ass

Nicole Laurenne: We spend a lot of time in the van sleeping, gossiping, griping, stopping at vintage stores, trying to find vegan and gluten-free food at roadside diners, and yes it’s true, rehearsing the set banging on steering wheels/dashboards/portable keyboards. Before and after the shows it really does kind of take on that slumber party vibe, as cliché as that might seem. All four of us are really involved in loading and unloading gear, setting up the stage, helping with the merch booth, and sound checking, but the emphasis is definitely on fun and hanging out with each other at the bar as much as possible. There is very little time spent on outfits and makeup and whatnot in this band; we all come to the stage pretty much as we are. That’s one of our mantras. Like I said, it’s cathartic.

THE DARTS (US) JAN 2017 TOUR DATES

JAN 14 PHOENIX Valley Bar
JAN 18 EL PASO Lowbrow Palace
JAN 19 SAN ANTONIO Limelight
JAN 20 AUSTIN The Blackheart
JAN 21 HOUSTON Notsuoh
JAN 22 NEW ORLEANS Siberia
JAN 23 AUBURN DeRailed
JAN 24 NASHVILLE Springwater
JAN 25 MEMPHIS DKDC
JAN 26 DALLAS Three Links
JAN 28 TUCSON Flycatcher
JAN 29 PHOENIX Rebel Lounge