It’s James Bond movie theme song meets Fantasia with a dash of The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses.
The celestial voice on “Like Battling the Hydra” belongs to hometown heroine Annie Clark, widely known as St. Vincent. The man behind the recently released single from a new EP — is Daniel Hart, a Lake Highlands-bred lad, along with his Los Angeles-based band Dark Rooms.
Dark Rooms also is responsible for the song at the center of 2017’s A Ghost Story, “I Get Overwhelmed.” “Battling the Hydra” is not a catchy heart-wrenching jam like that one, but it is vastly interesting.
Both of these Lake Highlands natives have received plenty of props this past year. She, for releasing her lauded seventh studio album Daddy’s Home, to name one. And, he, for composing the score for The Green Knight, the Arthurian fantasy feature just named best movie for 2021 by the North Texas Film Critics Association, he also recorded strings on Daddy’s Home, among other accomplishments.
Don’t get me wrong, both artists receive tons of attention. That said, this Dark Rooms tune has not exactly gone mainstream, so I recommend giving it a listen.
I just interviewed Daniel Hart for a profile that will appear in the February 2022 Lake Highlands Advocate, so stand by. (He rented out the old theater at Valley View mall to screen his latest film for his parents—just one of several nuggets of local gold we will deliver).
Until then, music nerds, may I suggest a dive down a Dark Rooms-Hart-Clark collaboration rabbit hole. Like the time they remade INXS’ 1987 album Kick.
Happy holidays.
