WESTERN SKIES :: Darden Smith

With Western Skies, Austin-based singer-songwriter Darden Smith has created a multi-form artistic experience unlike anything I've seen/read/listened to before. Created as a love message to his home state, the idea emerged during several road trips across West Texas, as Smith took polaroid photos to memorialize his trips and composed lyrics behind the wheel. 

The results of those trips and Smith's creative pathways are a beautiful collectible book and a companion album. The book includes Smith's photographs, essays derived from notes scribbled in his notebook on the road, lyrics to the songs on the album, forward by the legendary Rodney Crowell, and a link to download a free copy of all the Western Skies songs.

I found the experience a fantastic way to discover Smith's music. Listening along as I read the lyrics and perused the photos perused was a fantastic way to immerse myself in as broad a way as possible into the mindset and emotions of Smith as they relate to the land he loves and traveled.

 

I highlighted numerous passages and lyrics that I both wanted to remember and thought would be apt to share within a review. Yet when it now comes time to do so, it feels as though sharing only a part of the whole without its related elements does a disservice to what Smith has done. I will say I've now discovered music I would not have without the words, a writer I would not have known or understood as well without his music. And while Smith initially felt old-school polaroid photos wouldn't do the landscape justice, their eerie, ghost-like quality lends a gorgeous ethereal quality that seems to fit just right with the other parts. A rare feat, Western Skies is a gift for the senses.