Between 2015’s Supreme Court decision making marriage equality the law of the land, and the Equality Act charting a course through Congress, Aloud’s brain trust thought back to a song on their watershed album Exile, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this month.
Beginning October 12, a remixed version of “Darkest Days” will be available as a free download through Aloud’s online store.
“ ‘Darkest Days’ was written right around the time Prop 8 was upheld in California,” says singer and co-writer Henry Beguiristain, reflecting on the song’s genesis. “Jen and I were planning our wedding at the time, and thought it was madness that we could do this and our friends couldn’t, just because they happened to be gay.”
“We wanted to send a letter in song to our friends, telling them not to give up,” says Jen de la Osa. “With the [recent] Supreme Court ruling, it resonates even more now.”
The song first appeared on Aloud’s 2010 album Exile, produced by Daniel Nicholas Daskivich. Exile was lauded as “a stunning, multifaceted opus” (Hilary Hughes/DigBoston) representing Aloud’s “most expansive, sophisticated, and stylistically diverse work” (Boston Globe).
lyrics
Be free of your past.
You’ve done nothing wrong.
Freedom is as scarce
as the day is long.
Stand up tall.
Stand up straight.
You got nothing to fear,
no business being ashamed
Of your love, love, love.
Brother, we all need love
to get us through the darkest days to come.
Your memories will never fade.
A loss is just a debt
that’s left unpaid.
Soon one day,
it’ll all be gone.
It’s a physical world
and a race against time never won.
Except for love, love, love.
Sister, we all need love
to get us through the darkest days to come.
Without love, love, love,
where would we be, my love ?
Unarmed against the darkest days to come ?
Love, love, love.
Honey, we all need love
to get us through the darkest days to come.
Without love, love, love,
where would we be, my love ?
Unarmed against the darkest days to come.
Are these days the darkest days to come ?
credits
released October 12, 2015
Written by Jen de la Osa & Henry Beguiristain
Remixed by Charles Newman
Remastered by Tom at Atomix Mastering (Los Angeles, CA)
From the 2010 Aloud album Exile
Produced by Daniel Nicholas Daskivich
Additional engineering: Glenn Forsythe
Originally mastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering, Boston, MA with Maria Rice (assistant mastering engineer)
Henry Beguiristain: lead vocals, acoustic guitar, bass
Jen de la Osa: backing vocals, guitars, keys
Additional musicians
Daniel Nicholas Daskivich: drums, percussion
Aloud is, in the parlance of our times, a rock n’ roll band. Since our founding in Boston in the early 2000s we’ve released
5 albums, toured coast-to-coast several times, and even landed music in a few films. We’ve called L.A. home since 2017.
Aloud is currently putting a neat little bow on Apollo 6—their follow-up album to Sprezzatura which, if you believe what the papers tell you, is very good....more