Jordan Day

When Daughn Gibson disappeared, he left brief bursts of radio transmissions.

EPs would suddenly appear on Bandcamp, taken down months later. Did that album even exist? It was an easy question to ask considering the noir, mysterious tone of his previous records. Gibson, bass-baritone sprawling out like a wounded animal moaning their last breaths, made three albums in the early 2010s that were too early. The sample based, country-indebted, Twin Peaks inspired misdirection and intrigued they all held gained Gibson a cult following before he stepped into the mist.

Over a decade later, he’s returned with the death-haunted, darkly hilarious Lake Mary not mysterious. Gibson plays with perverse beauty, a Vietnam soldier falling madly in love on a napalm strewn battlefield, a beer bottle to the head revealing a glimpse of heaven, a murderous nurse bestowing the “day of the pillow.” There’s a version of Gibson who writes Raymond Carver or Flannery O’Connor short stories, balancing biting wit and desolation in equal measure. But we’re lucky he pairs it with his dark, entrancing musical world. We talked with him below.