DAR

***On his second album as DAR, Chicago songwriter Aaron Osbourne conjures a strangely triumphant celebration of life and love from beyond the casual boundaries of personal loss. Forging a complex path from grief to healing through self-spun yet ultimately collaborative music, there's some objectively tough stuff here. But the record never wallows in despair, nor asks you —the listener—to join in its trials. It’s a rock record. A really *good* rock record. And even furthermore, against all odds, a distinctively joyous one. In the spirit of K Records’ ramshackle heartbreak and the damaged baritone of Ted Lucas, Osbourne’s own idiosyncratic yowl lights the path from song to song with a fiery combustion of charm and dread. An unlikely landscape of acoustic guitars, toy pianos and digital brass surges into the foreground of normal rock shit to touching effect. Recorded by Jim Marlowe in Louisville at End of an Ear studio with the help of longtime friends and collaborators Jenny Rose & Ryan Davis (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Roadhouse Band) over the course of two years, 'A Slightly Larger Head' is the album that Osbourne deemed "essential to my survival…it was necessary." Savor the ride and keep going.