|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
  
  
|
|
Listings are
in the opposite order of appearance: headliner is listed at the top,
next is the support band(s),
and the last band listed is the opener.
|
 
|
|
|
|
| |
Wednesday
May 25 2022 8:00PM doors -- music at 8:30PM ••• ALL AGES $18 in advance / $20 at the door Noise Pop presents... Tasha www.wowtashawow.com/ indie folk folk Sour Widows www..sourwidows.com/ bedroom fuzz alt/indie rock Tasha -from Chicago, IL -Tasha’s second album, Tell Me What You Miss The Most mingles pockets of introspection with wide, expansive, marveling at what’s yet to come. Born and raised in Chicago, Tasha is a musician who writes songs that take loving and longing seriously. Whether dwelling in the sad thrum of an impending break up or the dizzying, heart thumping waltz of new infatuation, here is an album that traces one artist’s relationship to herself in love. Full of deep, invigorating inhales and relieved, joyful exhales, Tell Me What You Miss The Most is an exquisitely crafted breath of much needed air. “Won’t you lay near me please / goodbyes aren’t easy to swallow / Here take my heart for me / I don’t need all this old sorrow” Tasha sings, her voice smooth and honeyed in the first track of the album “Bed Song 1.” She stands on the brink of saying farewell to something once-sweet, the sentiment swirling into the slow-walking pace of the second track, “History,” which wonders aloud “Was it me / Did I not prove to you how far I’d go”. Still, the album refuses to stagnate, instead taking the listener on a whirl across a much-missed dance floor in “Perfect Wife,” calling to mind the sheer pleasure and giddiness of dancing hand-in-hand with a pretty girl. “Perfect Wife” is also a track that demonstrates Tasha’s musical versatility and showmanship, featuring a seamless, slightly retro chorus embroidered with the lilting chirrup of flutes as played by Vivian McConnell. Yes, Tell Me What You Miss The Most isn’t just a catalogue of tenderness----it’s also a showcase of Tasha’s growing and formidable musicianship. “When I made Alone at Last, I had only been writing songs for two years. I hardly even knew what kind of song writer I was. But this record feels much stronger as far as a representation of my songwriter and musicianship,” says Tasha, adding “I did feel like I was piloting it in a way that I haven’t really felt before.” Take the heady soprano whisper of “Sorry’s Not Enough” that crests into the wave-crashing roll of dissonance propelled by Ashley Guerrero’s insistent drumbeat. From its attention to instrumentation, the clean strumming of guitars both acoustic and electric, to the steady stretch of Tasha’s vocals across each verse and chorus, this is an album that follows an artist as she produces a sound all her own. In its second half, the album becomes more spacious, peering with clear eyes toward a blue horizon threaded with a folk tinged, out-of-doors sound. Chimes recorded outside her grandfather’s house twinkle on “Love Interlude.” On “Burton Island,” Tasha sings of “the sun’s last song,” asking “honey dance for a while, dance for a while.” In fact, many of these songs seem to invite gentle dancing, the type of breezy bodily weaving one might engage in on a Saturday morning or a firefly-dotted summer night. These are swaying songs,” Tasha says, extending an invitation to her listeners to rock back and forth, cradled by her music. “I was inspired by a distance I felt from myself,” says Tasha of the album, “the writing was kind of born from this desire to get back to an intimacy, or honesty, with myself.” Other inspirations include kissing, long drives in nature, her mother, and “winter and all that it allows (being alone inside, wrapped up in something warm, feeling things deeply.)” Her list of inspirations is a collection of types of touch; fleeting affectionate touch, the brush of a knit blanket, the bracing grip of feeling one’s own skin twinned in a palm. So too does the album veer in and out of touch with Tasha herself, tracing tenderness and loneliness, the paradox of feeling held and utterly abandoned at once. As the album winds down, the feeling of a sun setting or a year ending begins to glow, as if Tell Me What You Miss The Most charts a path through the desolate starkness of a personal winter, the blossoming of an internal spring, the blaze of a heart’s summer and then the golden dénouement of autumn. Regarding the shape of the album itself, Tasha discusses her intention for it to feel like a finished, fully realized piece of art. She says, “I wanted very much for this to feel like an album with a start and finish, where there’s an arc that’s brought back around.” An organic feeling of rise and fall lifts the album from beginning to end, especially given the bookend of “Bed Song 1” and “Bed Song 2.” Between these Bed Songs lies a journey of emotional burnishing, of loss, realization, re-imagination, with dreams bounding toward the future. Still, we begin and end in a place of intimacy and rest, reflecting Tasha’s long held belief in the necessity and power of respite. Listeners might recognize the bed as not just an album through line but a career one. Even while Tell Me What You Miss The Most represents growth and change, Tasha notes that “there are parts of me as a songwriter and emoting poet-person that carry over. Bed might be the obvious connection.” Listen to Tell Me What You Miss The Most as the sun peeks its downy head over the rooftops. Listen as you sit down to your cup of coffee, listen as you remember someone you once loved and wonder what might have been. Listen as you imagine different pasts, their many colors laid out before you, dizzying in their potential. Listen as the sun sets again and the moon rises, her cool face perfectly hung in the night sky. Listen as you imagine all the people you might someday be, all the mornings you’ll grow to greet. Listen as you pull someone close. Listen, and let the album pull you close. Sour Widows -from Oakland, CA -With Crossing Over, Sour Widows discover a new intensity by turning inward. The second EP from this Bay Area band dials back some of the volume that drove their self-titled 2020 debut to make space for themes of self-reflection and painful change that cut through with sharpened clarity. The luminous vocal harmonies, complex guitar interplay, and understated drumming that have been at the core of the band's sound remain foundational; but these four songs reach deeper, all the more stirring in their subtlety. Sour Widows was formed in 2017 by Maia Sinaiko, Susanna Thomson and Max Edelman. All three had been close since meeting in various phases of childhood, and when they found themselves living in the same area, making music together came naturally. Maia and Susanna initially performed as a guitar/vocal duo, with Max joining on as drummer in 2018 to add a rhythmic element that completed the band, grounding the songs and opening them to a new range of possibilities. With a musical connection that was an extension of their longtime friendship, the band began fine-tuning a sound that swung from gently glowing harmonizing to energetic bursts of feedback-laced catharsis. Before long they were touring and sharing bills with acts as diverse as Pile, Sen Morimoto, Tasha and members of Warpaint. After the release of their self-titled EP in February of 2020, the plan was to continue touring and start work on a full length album. As it did with so many others, the global pandemic abruptly changed plans for Sour Widows. Rather than slow momentum indefinitely while waiting to safely get into a studio, the band decided to work remotely recording new material themselves. Sour Widows’ music already drew as equally on sharpness as it did tenderness, but the deliberately spare atmosphere of Crossing Over enhances both. Tempos slow and the instrumentation softens while anxiety and grief crackle through these deceptively opulent songs. “Bathroom Stall” shares the experience of losing a partner to addiction with staggering vulnerability. It’s devastating and serene at once, shuffling quickly from placid scenes of quiet bedrooms to articulations of what it’s like to carry permanent, irreversible loss. Like much of the EP, the song is evenly paced and softly lit, but conveys gravity in even its most delicate moments. The title track is perhaps the strongest marker of the distinct evolution in sound throughout Crossing Over. The song slowly expands from a subdued two chord guitar progression into a dynamic, breathing organism, building tension as it winds through an unconventional song structure with aching lyrics centered around a long-distance relationship. It’s a song about the weight of love that sprawls out with the loneliness of an endless highway. Susanna and Maia worked on the song while quarantining together, and the protracted arrangement embodies both the frustrations of physical distance expressed in the lyrics and the strange new ways time felt in 2020. Crossing Over represents a new phase of Sour Widows’ artistry, and points to further growth with their soon-to-follow full length debut. The unique form of this EP documents the band discovering a voice which derives its translucent power from restraint and intentionality. |
 |