Dark Shades Of Blue

Maybe more than any of his previous albums, Xavier Rudd’s Dark Shades of Blue is a balance of darkness and light. That’s what the Australian singer-songwriter/one-man band/didgeridoo virtuoso hears in the disc.

Plenty of each went into making the disc. Dark Shades of Blue is the first Rudd album in several years to be recorded in Australia. As a result, it bears the joy and peace of mind that comes with an often-touring artist that gets a chance to catch his breath.

Recorded in Byron Bay on Australia’s eastern coast, it found the 30-year-old Rudd cutting tracks in the evening, before going to sleep under the stars, staring up at the Southern Cross and the Milky Way, his retriever curled up by his side. “Even though it’s a darker album,” says Rudd. “I think there is a lot of sunshine in the record. There’s brightness in the instruments, tonally, and I can hear the humidity in the didgeridoos, and in the guitar. I can hear that humidity, the warmth of the climate in Byron Bay.”