The Dark Fantastic

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by Dave Liljengren

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” the second witch says in Act 4, Scene I, of William Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy, MacBeth. The witches were talking about crown usurper MacBeth, but they may just as well have been talking about The Dark Fantastic, the self-titled CD from the central Washington band which has followed hard upon the death of legendary Northwest band Truly in the manner that MacBeth’s brief Scotch monarchy trailed the passing of the former king, Duncan. No, The Dark Fantastic did not kill Truly as they slept, but, like MacBeth, they have quickly usurped the latter’s throne as the most well-conceived, thoughtful rockers ever to come out of Ellensburg, Washington. And TDF is wicked indeed; wickedly good.

This spooky nightshade brew burbled up from the cauldron of Mark Pickerel, recently the Truly drummer. From 1984 to 1990, he was the Screaming Trees drummer. The product of a long-standing ambition to put his own voice in front of a band, Pickerel sings and writes the songs in TDF. Pickerel had expected to be the Screaming Trees vocalist when he joined them in 1984. At his first practice session however, the skin-pounding of then-drummer, Mark Lanegan, was so abysmal that Pickerel and Lanegan switched places for the duration.

Joined on bass by Screaming Trees veteran, Van Conner, Pickerel and TDF have put together 12 nocturnal sonatas which are not far afield from the Screamers crazed psychedelia. More song-based and catchy than Truly’s amorphous rock-operattas, these songs glide panther-like through desperate alt-country made thicker and richer by the keyboards of producer Martin Feveyear and by the ghostly organ playing of Laura Dimarco. Pickerel’s voice is – if not heavenly in its brilliance – at least seductive in its bleakness.