ARTICLE: Deardarkhead, Duck Amuck in Japan

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August 4, 2026 | Evan Bourgault

Shameless Tuesdays | Livre 185: Deardarkhead

Deardarkhead hit the road with a fury of a soundtrack called “The Pendulum Swings”. but also drops their DNA into this week’s Shameless Tuesdays!

For nearly 40 years, Deardarkhead has revved up a shoegazing post-punk sound with a trademark New Jersey gnarly attitude. Their latest album, The Pendulum Swings, is the exact soundtrack needed for a Hell’s Angels gang to roll down a haunting desert road, engines roaring like thunder and wheels burning on the brink of catching fire. All it needs is a pack of smokes paired with a skull & bones lighter, and the ultimate journey can commence. But before the axe can make its descent, Deardarkhead have summoned for us this week’s Shameless Tuesdays!

Here’s what Deardarkhead have to say about this week’s playlist:

“Hello, this is Rob Weiss from Deardarkhead. We are an American shoegaze, dreampop, post-punk band, that I started in 1988 and are based in the Atlantic City, New Jersey area. We are currently an all instrumental three piece and consist of: Kevin Harrington on guitar, James Malizia on bass guitar, and myself on drums. In the past we had a vocalist, but after his departure we decided to explore what we could do musically without words. We like to make atmospheric music which is melodic, dreamy and often loud, driving or psychedelic. The band takes its name from an Irish poem, “Cean Dubh Dilis” (1867 Sir Samuel Ferguson), about a beautiful girl with black hair. 
 
We recently released a 10 song album called ‘The Pendulum Swings’, which we would love for you to hear. You can check it out on all major streaming platforms and can be purchased at: https://deardarkhead.bandcamp.com/ Without a vocalist, the guitar becomes the main melody instrument, so we spend a lot of time trying to find new ways to make the songs interesting, yet still accessible. This was a huge focus for the album and we’d like to think we pulled it off! There is something incredibly pure about creating emotion without the use of lyrics to tell the listener how they should feel.
 
Every band on this playlist was either a direct influence when Deardarkhead started out or shaped our sound in the early years as we were evolving. All these songs have their own unique sound, but they create an atmosphere that takes you somewhere else. This is something we’ve always aspired to. While I don’t think we sound exactly like any one of these bands, they are a huge part of our musical DNA and inspiration for starting a band all these years ago. We hope you will enjoy it!”