No. 14 - Forever Waiting, Suffering For Kisses (2018)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s).

One main feature of the past ten years musically has been the fragmentation of the scene, with the likes of MySpace, Soundcloud and in particular Bandcamp allowing artists to bypass record companies and the media and put their music directly in front of fans by uploading it to the platforms in question and tagging key words/genres to attract fans of similar bands.

The simultaneous growth of digital home recording technology has enabled the rise of the “one-man band” whether the likes of Ed Sheeran in the mainstream or the thousands of artists in the darkwave/goth/post-punk spectrum ploughing their own furrow, and my latter selections in this best of the decade round-up will be dominated by such acts.

The first artist whom I personally followed on a track-by-track basis in the early years of the 2010’s was Stockholm-based Eric Sparkwood who operates under the name Foghorn Lonesome, and whose music was described as being influenced by "Depeche Mode and The Sisters of Mercy" on his Soundcloud page. With falling basslines, a lugubrious pace, lush synth backgrounds and a half-whispered baritone vocal telling tales of lost love and regret, FL began to create a worldwide cult following, with the distribution of pin badges featuring the band’s very gothic crown of thorns logo (think The Danse Society) and the creation of a fangroup Children of the Horn, where followers were encouraged to upload their own photos, artwork etc, which ultimately resulted in the fantastic video collage (sadly now unavailable) which accompanied the most memorable song Always the Undertow. With songs added on almost a monthly basis, by the end of 2014 Sparkwood had enough material for an eponymous debut digital album. Half of the album, was made up of more upbeat, dance-oriented synth pop, and Sparkwood has continued the move in this direction over the past five years of very sporadic releases.

Another one-man band operating in a similar sonic area is Suffering For Kisses, the cold/darkwave project of Oregon-based Tony D’Oporto, whose stark and monochromatic debut set Forever Waiting  on Bandcamp gained him a large following upon release in 2018. D’Oporto’s deadpan vocal over a spartan backing of bass and drumbeat with occasional swathes of synth brought comparisons to Joy Division, with dark lyrics about isolation and rejection. Several of the tracks had previously been released as stand-alone tracks, such as the self-descriptive Beautifully Dark, featuring a wonderfully light guitar cameo courtesy of Mark Hjorthoy.

Photos of crying angel graveyard statues, titles like Pretty In Black and In The Night and D’Oporto’s chilling vocals all added to the strong gothic vein running through what is essentially a dark synthpop project, but it was his ear for a multi-layered less-is-more arrangement and his strong melodic composition which made Forever Waiting one of my most-played albums of the decade, with simple ideas such as She’s Gone Away being executed with a subtlety that only added to the pervading sense of melancholic gloom.

The prolific D’Oporto has already produced a follow-up EP and two further singles which retain the same song-writing style, although the power of the light-touch guitar and bleak atmosphere which made the debut such a dark delight has in general been reduced by the lusher arrangements where synths are more to the fore, although he remains an artist worth following.

D'Oporto is one of many artists who have benefitted from the ability to use digital technology in teh recording process and digital platforms to reach fans directly, although the sheer number of groups and individuals using this route will always make it hard for them to reach a mass audience. 

Suffering For Kisses music can be bought via their Bandcamp page, with a similar situation for Foghorn Lonesome via their page.