American rock bands are doing what The Beatles did in the 60s when they pillaged American blues and soul, gave it a British twist and sold it back to them sounding better than it had when they were making it themselves. Forty five years later we have bands such as Beach House, TV on The Radio, Wild Nothing, Interpol and Twin Shadow re-appropriating early 90s British shoegaze music and doing the same to us, now added to that list is San Francisco based act Tamaryn.
Their debut album ‘The Waves’ is a drowsy mixture of soporific atmospherics and doom laden almost whispered vocals. Live, they multiply the sonic textures of their music, highlighting its delicate intricacies and heightening the drama.
Tamaryn’s Rex Shelverton is showing the potential to ably stand beside such guitar anti-heroes as Dave Sitek or Johnny Greenwood. Live his guitar work is much more expressive than the frozen vocals, making the whole thing come alive, he urgently scratches over ‘Mild Confusion’ which could be a track from Verve’s ‘A Storm in Heaven album’, he can just as easily take a back seat as shown with his tender riffs on ‘Love Fades’ and evoke bad acid trips on ‘Sandstone’, think Robin Guthrie performing with Kevin Shields, that good.
Tamaryn herself is a remarkable performer, the kind who soaks up all the attention by just being a mysterious presence, she doesn’t actually do anything which makes her even more unnerving, when she coldly whispers “Come down to the surface, the surface reflects the light, wait for the water…to claim you” as she does on ‘The Waves’, it’s genuinely sexy and chilling like ‘Rid of Me’ era Polly Harvey.
The UK has a long and rich line of fantastic odd front women but now this equates to Florence Welch, odd only for not wearing fake tan. Tamaryn channels the very best of these women, Siouxsie, Kate Bush, Toni Halliday and an intelligible Liz Fraser whilst very much being her own woman. If you like dark angel fronted bands backed with a murky gothic stew then Tamaryn are the ones for you and live, they’re nothing less than spectacular.
Words by Chris Todd
