Darian Donovan Thomas - A Room With Many Doors: Day (2025)

“This is where the Room With Many Doors thing actually came from: All these different genres are happening in a row and whereas I think the record sequence is a good straight line, I'm very okay with people coming in from wherever they're comfortable.”

The opening delay-drenched, granular, and spacious violins that blossom like flowers of ‘safe space’ slowly set the stage for Thomas’ voice to declare his intentions for this record “make a safe space, please make a safe space for me.” Thomas wanted to share a “surface level introspection” to start the record. “Safe Space was a song that came out really quickly as I was processing some feelings one night. It sounded completely different from what it is on the album — It was on toy piano with me just barely singing along — yet it became a mission statement of the whole thing: just figuring out a place to self-assess, to strengthen, to train emotionally and mentally so that when I'm in situations with other people it can be handled better.” As the song opens up, Thomas’ production comes into full focus with pulsing drums, shimmering pads, interwoven vocals, and myriad ear candies.

The videogame score inspired ‘Testing Center’ (featuring Brooklyn-based Talk Bazaar) retells a trip to a planned parenthood in Brooklyn. Capturing the anxieties experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities around intersecting issues of identity, health, and safety, Thomas’ gentle voice soothes those anxieties in lullaby-like fashion. High speed arpeggios are met with bit crushing and glitches as the song dissolves into chaotic noise.

‘HereThere’ recounts a long distance relationship Thomas was a part of during a long touring period before his move from Texas to New York. Glitched and driving percussion mimic the intense feelings conjured during a high intensity emotional experience with another person and the push and pull of short term romance.

Originally written for voice, guitar, and string quartet, ‘Fluorescence’ is reimagined as full speed-late night neon streams by drummer Ben Sloan’s driving break, harpist Kitba’s flowing arpeggios, and Thomas on synths, production, and voice.

“‘Mr & Mr Married’ was mostly Mike Haldeman,” says Thomas of the guitarist's contribution to the song. Haldeman had posted a clip online with “beautiful fields of sounds” which intrigued Thomas to try singing this song over top of it. Sam Amidon provided added banjo textures. The lush soundscape frames a dream; Thomas explains: “Mr & Mr Married was a dream, an idea of this person, but they were not ready to pursue anything, of course, which also is a big theme on the record. This recurring theme of me being like ‘we can do it’ and others being like 'no’.”

A stylistic pivot brings us to the pop-punk inspired ‘OhNo’ (featuring Panther Hollow). What starts out as a soft spoken tale of infidelity grows into a full on head-bagning rock song reflective of the anger and hurt felt on the receiving end of such an experience. “The actual song was written the night that all of that happened. It just fell out very fast because I was pissed,” explains Thomas. “The song is not only to the audience but also to my future self — a reminder: ‘let's not come back here again.’”

The free flowing ‘Purple Flowers’ features moving performances by bassist Petros Klampanis and drummer Lesley Mok that culminate in a driving, explosive, and industrial peak littered with emotional drops, flowing violins, and Thomas’ powerful chorus. “I really like when the very straight ahead groove comes in on Purple Flowers,” says Thomas, “because it's so out of left field. That whole section is just such a series of strong choices. It's kind of me getting my stubbornness out, like I don't want it to be normal, even though it's already not a normal song.”

Album closer ‘Microcosm Friend’ (featuring a scream by Talk Bazaar) is a deconstruction of pop structure as Thomas explains “I really love structuring things out and Microcosm Friend is precisely a song. There's intro, there's verses, there's chorus, and it moves in the order it should—but it doesn't sound like it—it sounds crazy. The song falls apart and explodes, there’s weird looping suddenly happening.” Lyrically the song is a representation of a discussion Thomas had with another person about defining a relationship and the troubles that come with such a definition.