Biography

Tim Darcy is a Canada-based songwriter, guitarist, and singer with an idiosyncratic delivery that can evoke a young David Byrne or Lou Reed. Known as leader of the high-intensity indie rock band Ought, he's also released more personal solo material. Going by Tim Beeler at the time (his birth surname), the Arizona-born musician formed Ought in Montreal in 2011 with keyboardist Matt May, bassist Ben Stidworthy, and drummer/violinist Tim Keen. Taking heavy cues from their city's thriving scene of underground politics, loft parties, and D.I.Y. culture, the band melded unlikely influences from both high-energy mid-'90s emo bands and airy, early college rock acts like the Feelies and Talking Heads. The bandmembers all lived together in a shared apartment/practice space, self-recording their first EP, New Calm, in 2012. They played frequently in Montreal, eventually catching the ear of indie label Constellation, which released their debut full-length album, More Than Any Other Day, in the spring of 2014. They returned with a four-track EP, Once More with Feeling..., in October of the same year. Darcy then legally adopted his mother's maiden name at the beginning of 2015, and Ought's second LP, Sun Coming Down, appeared in September of 2015. In 2016, Darcy released an experimental collaboration with sound artist A.J. Cornell. Entitled Too Significant to Ignore, it paired existential spoken monologues with a patchwork of field recordings, electronic effects, and manipulated objects. Darcy returned to indie rock in early 2017 with his first solo album. Collecting songs of a more personal nature that didn't quite fit with Ought, including a few that predated the band, Saturday Night also marked his debut with Jagjaguwar. ~ Marcy Donelson & Fred Thomas, Rovi