A Heavy Heaven for Robby
Ameriglow
Independent Release, 2015
“I just miss my best friend” sings Jacob Darden on “Dreams pt 1.” Darden sounds like he just woke up or as if he’s been awake for 36 straight hours, one or the other, but a more disheveled vocal you couldn’t get from Neal Young. 
And speaking of Mr. Young, “running out of drugs (which is worse)” could be a CSNY jam which they never had the good fortune of capturing properly in the studio.
On A Heavy Heaven for Robby there’s psychedelia, meshed with folk, rock and shades of shoegaze trippy-ness in these songs that fall apart and come together seemingly at will and whim.
There’s a moody ebb and flow to the album listened to from start to finish. From the discordant strains of “the chaos is strong” which ends suddenly, and surprisingly flows into the bright and brief pop of “the numbers are random,” back into the recovery room reflections of “foundations of a wish.”
Constructed much like a novel, the narrator is now wide awake when he sings us through, “your postcard wasn’t funny.” The backing is a tired seaside boardwalk band distracted and no longer amused by these songs in their repertoire.
This is a cathartic journey Darden’s taking us on. As he excises difficult emotions along with ordinary memories which will later prove to be pivotal moments. “violent clouds” seem to daubed with sugar here, as an uptempo beat buoys the song along. But there’s a great deal of anger of a personal nature in these songs. The anger is frustrated, volatile and stunted. Unwilling to let go completely.
If Syd Barret had been lucky enough to be locked in a broom closet with an acoustic guitar and the first Stone Roses album, it’d come out like this.