Album Review: Tamaryn - Tender New Signs

Back in 2010, California-based Kiwi chanteuse Tamaryn (alongside her collaborator Rex John Shelverton) released the sonorous debut album, The Waves, which was a kinetic yet metronomic display of shoegaze nous and nuance. Two years later she delivers Tender New Signs, and despite it being a bright and airy record, it's clear that being swallowed by feedback and reverb is her sonic blueprint. Yet, despite its overfamiliarity due to the plethora of likeminded souls mining the genre in the 21st century, the nine tracks on offer here meld together in a way that some of the classic predecessors would find more than agreeable.

I'm Gone opens the album with the swirling squall of guitar over which Tamaryn's soaring vocals take flight, her lyrics swallowed by the depths of reverb in which her voice is cocooned, and it proves to be the blueprint for the entire album. The trick that she does mostly with aplomb has been to infuse the noise with a sense of fragility, even beauty. Her voice comes through like an ethereal refrain, endlessly doomed to roam the land, thus lending the juxtaposition of darkness and light that such sonics requires.

Yet, as much as these songs resonate on their own (such as the almost-traditional plodder, It's Too Late, that fizzes in its own noise, or the mood-laden clarity of Violets In A Pool), as a whole Tender New Signs blends into one lengthy soundscape, which is a double-edge sword; as a whole it has a dazed splendour, but its repetitiveness tarnishes the sheen these tracks have when taken out of context.