REVIEW: Letting Go, The RingMaster Review
/May 22, 2026 | Pete RingMaster
Entangled in the Shameless: Part 1 Fascination
With their new album, The Pendulum Swings, waiting in the wings, New Jersey alt rock outfit DEARDARKHEAD have laid down a potent invitation with the track Letting Go. It is the recently released lead single from the FERTILE CRESCENT RECORDS brought full-length, its own unveiling set for July 10th, and a moment of instrumental enterprise that swiftly had ears and the imagination on board.
DEARDARKHEAD consists of guitarist Kevin Harrington, drummer Robert Weiss and bassist James Malizia, a line-up in place from in August 2024, though the upcoming album features previous bassist Brandon Howard. After the departure of its vocalist/bassist Michael Amper in 2009, DEARDARKHEAD became instrumental prominent and grown into crafting tracks that are rich in suggestive storytelling as Letting Go proves. The decades since emerging in 1988, has seen the band share stages with the likes of SUPERGRASS, THE LILYS, EVERCLEAR, NOTHING, and THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS among many, and their new track sees keyboardist Joe McGinty, renowned for his time in the latter band guesting.
Letting Go calmly moves in but quickly spins a web of guitar incitement around rhythmic fertility. It is not so much a trap but an invitation of sound that grows as the band aligns individual enterprise for its contemplation of growth and the strength in embracing change.
As all the best instrumentals, it is a track that presents its own contemplation but leaves plenty of its suggestive canvas free for the listener’s imagination to interpret and cast their own relatable premise while involving them in the allure of spicy grooves and intimate melodies. Letting Go is a richly enjoyable invitation into that upcoming DEARDARKHEAD album too, and we cannot imagine being alone in keenly waiting for that.