Longest Day of the Year

Led by Burlington, Vermont-based musician Zachary James, Dari Bay is the result of a twisted home recording project gone horribly right. His eccentric lo-fi sound evolved into more grounded (if still slightly surreal) expressions by the time of Longest Day of the Year, a 2023 album that found Dari Bay’s experimental spirit folding into deceptively neutral, unassuming tunes. Double Double Whammy is pleased to be teaming up with Dari Bay, beginning with the expanded reissue of Longest Day of the Year in 2026. There’s both ageless comfort and time-bending confusion in the sunset-colored guitar tones of album opener “Wait For You,” and in the unfussy amble of “Same Old Bumpy Road.” Hints of recognizable ’90s alt rock achiness or twangy slowcore show up here and there, but closer listening reveals how winding and non-linear these seemingly stripped-down songs actually are. This reissue includes the addition of one previously unreleased track, “Interstate.” Recorded before the sessions for LDotY, “Interstate” represents evidence of the transition from Dari Bay’s earlier, noisier material into the more fine-tuned songcraft of the album. The unpredictable twisting of guitar tones, lyrical phrases, and feeling itself puts Dari Bay in a lineage of idiosyncratic songwriters that reaches from Judee Sill and Alex Chilton through to Elliott Smith and Liz Phair, right up to present day boundary-bending contemporaries. Throughout Longest Day of the Year, James leans into listener expectations as often as he completely disregards them, ultimately finding a captivating equilibrium between the alien and the familiar.