Night and day. If you were to line up Marcus King’s 2024 solo release, Mood Swings, against his latest effort, Darling Blue, that’s what you’d experience, the radical difference between an artist seized by shadows and one caught in the light. If the former, a viscous voyage through depression and addiction, saw King crying out in desperation, it’s almost as if the latter finds his calls answered.
Having reunited in the studio with his longtime live band – the first time since Carolina Confessions from 2018 – the genre-blurring bluesman crafted Darling Blue with a kind of ease and weightlessness that is evident from the album’s first contemplative notes. It’s not that he shies away from those topics of mental health and recovery this time around, but he’s now navigating them haloed in a hard-earned peace and with a few friends by his side.
