It’d be untrue to say that “Darker” is actually darker than the other tracks Shamir has released from his upcoming album — Ratchet — all of which are actually refreshingly optimistic. But it’s certainly more pensive. What we’ve heard thus far — between “On the Regular”‘s boisterous introduction and “Call it Off”‘s affirmative, “you can do better” life-coaching — has been exuberant and wildly danceable, leaving little time to pause and think. “Darker,” though surprisingly uplifting in its betrayal of its title with the lyric “It doesn’t get darker unless you expect it to,” diverges in its full embrace of balladry. Like the Northtown EP‘s “I’ll Never Be Able to Love,” it’s a showcase of the power of Shamir’s voice, and for that reason, the video for “Darker” features no neon powder and no muppets — it’s just the singer in the middle of the dessert, looking at once commanding and tiny, as his setting vacillates between twilight and day, and as the faint sound of a helicopter courses through the song. The filming is reminiscent of this hovering quality in the song — Anthony Sylvester directed it using high-flying drones to capture the footage.
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