Tarah Who? Tarah G. Carpenter is who, with accompaniment that varies from one person (like her April 2013 single “Tear Apart”) up to five (on “Half Middle Child Syndrome” from June 2017), rocks.
I can’t get any more succinct than that!
Tearing it up or kicking back, Tarah delivers with no compromise. “I usually write when I am angry or sad, sometimes it is just sarcasm,” she explains. Little Pieces, Burn That Shithole Down, and Pantomath are great examples of Tarah‘s no-bullshit, tells-it-like-she-sees-it style. And Pay To Play shake my head: not because of the pathetic situation that she describes and has obviously been sucked in to, but because not only isn’t it endemic purely of my experience of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, it continues to this day, and more bands have been and will continue to be sucked in every time.
“I don’t really write metaphors, so I think that you can get the gist of the situation by reading the lyrics. They aren’t any mysteries or read in between the lines here,” she explains as much about her new single “Swallow That Pill” as anything else in her discography.
Shot just before the big lockdown in LA by Erica Torres in a literal break room, the song (and accompanying video) is about breaking habits. People take advantage and those having advantage taken need an advocate! Enter Tarah. “One of my last jobs, my employer, on my second day, asked me to “turn” so that he could check if my pants were not too baggy, and then asked me to get tighter pants because they were a “classy” establishment. Disclaimer: I don’t wear baggy pants.. but I needed the cash, so I just kept it to myself, but then I noticed that he was abusive, and harassing all of the girls. They had NO idea”.
On “Swallow That Pill”, Tarah (vocals, guitar, bass, backing vocals, theremin) and Coralie Hervé (drums) absolutely smash it! On every imaginable level! I just hope that mirror doesn’t bring them bad luck for any length of time!
Tarah Who? Los Angeles-based alternative-rock grunge/punk that, if you don’t understand it, you really weren’t paying attention. Maybe it was you that she was taking about? Punk with intelligence, thought, and feeling behind the songs, and some very un-punk production values and musicianship! And come February 19, you will be able to sample even more of Tarah’s work on her “Manners” single. An album as well? You don’t want too much, do you?! “Exposed” comes out 9 April 2021! But too much Tarah is barely enough.
If you still have to ask “Tarah Who?“ after all of that, you are part of the problem!