Darlingside serenades Philadelphia fans at Union Transfer on Friday

Darlingside | photo by Ellen Miller for WXPN | ellencm.com

On Friday night, fans of all ages packed into Union Transfer for a night with Boston-based folk four-piece Darlingside. The band is a few weeks into touring with the new album they released in late February, Extralife.

As the venue filled with eager fans, Twain came on to warm everybody up. Though on prior nights of the tour, Twain had the full band opening the show, last night Mat Davidson of Twain did a solo acoustic set. This did not matter, though; the crowd was intrigued as Davidson played emotional version of songs, filling spaces between them with thanks to Darlingside (“this is the coolest thing to happen in my life in a while”) and plugging his new album, due out later this year.

After a brief break between sets Darlingside took the stage in all smiles while the audience gave out a loud cheer. Before they got to the music though they needed explain to us something new they tried the night before upon arriving in Philadelphia. This has us bracing ourselves for the standard Philly cheesesteak story or Tastykake story that out-of-towners mix into their stage banter. Not with Darlingside, though. Cellist / guitarist, Harris stated that last night he tried “Philadelphia Vanilla Ice Cream” for the first time. Which he was not even aware of this being a thing before then. This got the show off to a light-hearted start before Darlingside slid into a more serious mood for their first song “Singularity.”

While Extralife is only a little over a month old, their old-song-to-new-song ratio was solid last night. The stage was basically empty, aside from various instruments in a tight semi-circle around a single microphone positioned center-stage. The foursome stood together around that single microphone for the majority of the set but swapped spots every now then depending on the instrument that each of them played in each song.

Somewhere around halfway through, there was large cheer from the crowd when Harris put down his guitar and pick up his cello for the first time in the night. The 16-song set list had each of their four albums represented. Mixed in with the handful of new songs were crowd favorites like “Harrison Ford,” “White Horses,” and “Whippoorwill.” The night came to a close after a two-song encore, but the members of Darlingside could still be found mingling with fans in the lobby and by the merchandise counter.

Take a look at the photos from the night and the full set list below.

Setlist
Singularity
Eschaton
Go Back
White Horses
My Gal, My Guy
Hold Your Head Up High
Extralife
The Ancestor
Harrison Ford
Whippoorwill
Futures
Good For You
Best of the Best Times
The God of Loss

Encore:
Orion
Blow the House Down