Daniel Francis Doyle

This is Daniel Francis Doyle the crooner, the gentle heart, the tender melodist. This is the A-Side to his newest 7-inch, out in October as the second release ever on Soungs Records. B-Side, "Share Stories" quickly slips into the Austinite's classic one-man noise prattle and more overt loop mayhem but you'll buy the 7-inch and know more about that.

For now let's sink deep in the duplicity of "There Are Two Of You" which accuses "you" of a kind of personality order ennui, while Mr. Doyle's stuck with not two, but three different Doyles. (Could he be referring partly to the three instruments that grace every Doyle track? Or his acute schizophrenia? Maybe he's actually both the "you's" and just one Doyle, thereby adding up to three? Why can't you take a plane every time you lie?)

It could go at least five different ways. Enjoy this skittering ballad with a sad loved one or substitute for three or four imaginary friends who you think are real.

Daniel Francis Doyle, "There Are Two Of You" - Impose Magazine

"...one-man-band acts have become increasingly common in recent years, so there's no point in praising Doyle or dismissing him as a gimmick. Instead, what was remarkable was just how unique, complex, and tightly arranged his songs were."
- Baltimore City Paper, April 10, 2008

Jake Duzsik of HEALTH on Daniel Francis Doyle's "Head Up":

"...Doyle is a dude from Austin who loops insanely fucked up, angular guitar riffs that still have a sort of Minutemen-esque bounce to them. Then he plays drums and sings/screams into a headset mic, cueing the loops with his foot. It fucking destroys. This song is from his Who Are Your Customers EP, and it is nothing short of being one of the most brutal break up songs ever. Pure noise and screaming "come back" till you need a voice box sells me way more than some wistful acoustic guitar bullshit. I think this the most openly emotionally moving noise song I have ever heard."

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/49894-health
- Pitchfork, May 15, 2008

Among a small crowd of grungy hipsters, Daniel Francis Doyle looks like your unassuming neighbor. Sporting cargo shorts and actual, prescription glasses, he sticks out without trying. It becomes even clearer once he plays, too, that he’s the one thing in the mix that isn’t like the others. Sandwiched between more standard, lo-fi drum and guitar-driven, melodic rock acts, Doyle takes the floor at The Smell in Los Angeles alone.

The initial appeal of Daniel’s set is just seeing what in the world is about to happen.

The thing is: for anyone looking to get to know beforehand, his MySpace page boasts a minimal display. There a few pictures of Daniel and some of his older songs, but although the genre listed on his page is just ‘rock/rock/rock,’ the first track to auto-play exposes Doyle’s tendencies toward noise experimentation and slightly off-beat patterns. With that as a pre-cursor, it’s hard to figure out what to expect, but as soon as everyone has moved in close to listen, Doyle blows the room back with a scatterbrained, snare-heavy drum intro.

He’s skilled. A modern one-man band, Doyle’s music does stray more towards the more experimental, almost unmelodic rhythms and arrangements, but live, the barrage comes across more cohesively than on record. One huge help is being able to witness the methods behind Doyle’s seeming chaos. Online it’s hard to tell whether Doyle has intentionally structured songs to sound off-beat, or if he just hasn’t yet perfected his use of GarageBand. The material he plays in promotion of his new album, We Bet Our Money On You, is off-kilter enough to be jarring but not so much that listeners can always easily tell he isn’t actually trying to go for something more pop-friendly and just missing the mark.

Live, audience members watch this Austin native go from the drums to recording guitar loops on the spot, and then jumping back to use the automation to give the illusion of other players without missing a beat. Doyle’s quick, focused, and he’s so enthusiastic about playing and yelling lyrics over the music that after just the intro, his t-shirt has begun to soak through. A song like “Street Stress” kick-starts with relentless crash cymbals and moves into a stuttered beat that hooks and grinds at the senses simultaneously, inciting the same kinds of emotions only something like city traffic and commotion only can.

Doyle also knows the rules of ebb and flow. In the middle of his half-hour set, he slows the momentum way down with a dreamy ballad. Turned almost away from the audience, Doyle sings about a complicated relationship, both deriding and lamenting the experience as he sings ‘Since then I’ve been a little pig/rolling in shit/and it’s not so bad’. It’s the only time any of the lyrics are especially intelligible, sort of bittersweet and entrancing. Throughout the rest of the music, where the instrument almost suffers from disjointed vocals, Doyle’s voice becomes arresting. Everyone leans in a little closer again, but as soon as the song is finished, Doyle busts up the somber moment to get right back to drums and sharp guitar riffs, and he cruises through an overwhelming finish. It takes a moment to understand where he’s coming from, but Daniel Francis Doyle proves he knows the best way to win people over it just not to give them too long to breathe. He’s from the same ilk as a band like Hella, sometimes dipping into arrangements that take a cue from Explosions in the Sky. Complete with rough, staccato singing after John Darnielle’s own heart, it’s hard to deny that, as confusing as Daniel Francis Doyle is, he also inspires a deep and unavoidable joy.
- GREENSHOELACE.COM, June 19, 2009

Austin's Daniel Francis Doyle is currently touring with his new nine song, 33-minute LP We Bet Our Money On You. While it's hard to shake anything but the sheer virtuosity of a Daniel Francis Doyle live set (with guitars and vocals looped in real time, piled atop his frenetic drumming), it's worth trying to lose any impressions you might have for the benefit of the deftly composed, often surprising tunes he's recorded for this album. Also, dude sounds more than a little like Jonathan Richman, especially with the rueful perceptiveness he offers up like, "Learning things at school / always troubled you / you should learn another way to live / but you didn't." So, yes: see his shows, and buy the album he'll be selling. - Impose Magazine, April 21, 2009

"...Where the typical Daniel Francis Doyle is eclectic and erratic, the softer side of Doyle is minimalistic. “Send You Away” finds Doyle on vocals backed only by stringed instruments, while “Your Baby Is Speaking” is merely vocals and piano. These songs are highly melodic with intense attention to every note, each instrument’s entrance, and every musical nuance. And there are also in-between moments, as heard in the songs “Your Cursive” and “Learning Things At School”.

We Bet Our Money On You is an impressive dichotomy of musical styling, from the highly erratic math-noise, to the softer intricacies of the same, to the minimalist detail scarce but rewarding nonetheless. What may be the most astonishing element is Daniel Francis Doyle is just that — one man. He has no accompaniment, no additional members. It is his genius and his genius alone… We Bet Our Money On You is easily a favorite discovery of 2009." - FensePost.com, June 30, 2009

"In the grand old tradition of watching one-man bands attempt the impossible in the cruel hope that their entire shtick will collapse in humiliating disaster, you really have to give it up for Daniel Francis Doyle, an Austin octopus who makes a most disarmingly feral noise on recorded guitar loops as he whips and lashes his polybeat tubs while confessing and pleading in sputtering yelps on his trusty headset mic. Far from a merely amusing novelty act, Doyle is commitment personified, pushing his and our physical and emotional parameters to scary and dramatic extremes..." - LA WEEKLY, June 10, 2009