River Whyless – “Darkness In Mind”

North Carolina folk-rock band River Whyless are channeling 60's mod rock psychedelia morphing it into a modern indie pop dreamsicle. The band’s forthcoming third album Kindness, A Rebel is due out the summer.

The group has three singers and because each member writes songs the group had a ton of previewing material with several singles to deliver. The following is what the group's violinist/vocalist Halli Anderson had to say about the inspiration behind their far out, sunny side up new single “Darkness In Mind”:

"Three unshakable people (a stranger, a brother, and a friend) have led to the writing of “Darkness In Mind.” The first is a mill-worker whom I displaced when buying a house in Astoria, OR. The second, a welder in Louisville, KY with cancer and no health insurance, and the third, a conservative rancher in Etowah, NC, where I grew up. Together they make the imagined character that I’m addressing in “Darkness”: a middle-aged white male cannery worker who appears to live in an entirely different world than me.

From employment to politics, to religion, we are on opposite sides of a wall. I search for the connecting thread that can tie us together, from my little hopeful bubble to his. The song is an effort to understand someone else while I simultaneously tangle with a growing piece of guilt that is born from the luxury of being able to choose to pursue my passions.

We both work our asses off and we both go to bed hurting at night, but are we working for the same thing? Is it comparable? Compatible? What is it? The seed germinates in my mind and is contaminating even the most upbeat songs, for better or for worse, and leading me to ask “What am I making love for?”


Click on all the psychedelia groove below!