O'Neil, Tara Jane

O'Neil, Tara Jane

The Cool Cloud of Okayness

Orindal

***The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written amidst the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her last song based album (although there has been a fascinating array of collaborations, tributes, rarities, and experiments released in the interim). Recorded by TJO at her home studio in Upper Ojai, California, a studio built on the ashes of the home lost to the Thomas Fire. Many of The Cool Cloud of Okayness’s nine tracks were developed in the time between the wildfire and the rebuilding, between lockdown and reopening. TJO, her partner (dancer, choreographer and frequent collaborator) Jmy James Kidd and their dog sheltered from the storms in the high desert of Southern California and the deep suburbs of Louisville, KY. In these locales were discovered the improvised bass guitar figures to Kidd’s dance which transformed into songs during pandemic isolation, then brought to the ensemble of drummer/percussionist Sheridan Riley (of Alvvays), multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements, and on a couple, guitarist Meg Duffy (of Hand Habits & Duffy x Uhlmann). They build and gleefully destroy and rebuild again. There is joy in the ensemble’s shared queer identity- an identity that refuses to be agreed upon. This record too challenges any easy genre or definition. This record is sculpture and portrait of times and loved ones gone past. It is spiritual and it is psychedelic. TJO’s deft production and rock-solid bass playing hold the center, and her spectral guitar and singing voice carry the message.

O'Neil, Tara Jane

Songs for Peacock

Orindal

***Twenty-eight years into her kaleidoscopic discography, Songs for Peacock is the first album singer/guitarist/composer Tara Jane O’Neil has credited to just her initials: TJO. Recorded at home using primitive electronic instruments in addition to heavily effected electric guitar, bass & voice, Songs for Peacock is a collection of pop covers recalled from TJO’s youth, intended as a “mixtape” for her late brother Brian. Over twelve tracks & thirty-nine minutes, Songs for Peacock abstracts radio hits by the likes of Boy George, Bananarama, Leonard Cohen, Siouxsie and the Banshees & INXS, distilling earworms into thin wisps of dreamlike atmosphere, or stretching them into languorous psychedelic soundscapes. Songs for Peacock warps our collective musical memory to form a singular & cohesive body of work that defines TJO’s highly personal sonic landscape.

O'Neil, Tara Jane

Yoake - Music From And Near The Film

TJO

Renowned singer/songwriter/instrumentalist, and experimental sound artist/improviser in recent years, Tara Jane O’Neil weaves the tapestry of this instrumental score, which also includes a symphonic track made with her long time friend Jean Cook's (Ida, Jon Langford) string arrangements. Not only as a film soundtrack, this ambient album echoes with all of the afterglow even without her voice. This limited Japanese release original album reverberates with her spirit. For each listener’s sleepless dawn soundtrack, this gem of an album reckons for repeated listening. 

O'Neil, Tara Jane

S/t

Gnomonsong

Tara Jane O'Neil describes her latest album "Self Titled" as a "singer songwriter"  endeavor.At the invitation and by the design of Mark Greenberg (The Coctails), half of this record was recorded mostly live at Wilco’s Loft Studio in Chicago with a band that included James Elkington, Gerald Dowd, Nick Macri, and Greenberg himself. Another half was made in TJO’s home studio in California with Devin Hoff, Wilder Zoby, Walt McClements and string supervisor Jim James. This album also features the voices of Chris Cohen, Carolyn Pennypacker-Riggs and Joan Shelley. Tara Jane ONeil plays guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion.As a solo artist she has released eight full-length albums internationally.  O’Neil was a founding member of Rodan, the Sonora Pine , amongst other ensembles. She has collaborated on recordings and stages with Papa M,  Michael Hurley, Little Wings, Marisa Anderson, Catherine Irwin, Mirah, Mount Eerie,  and many many others. She has  also performed at clubs, galleries, and DIY spaces around the world and venues such as the Centre de Pompdou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and All Tomorrow’s Parties.  She starred in the cult classic film Half-Cocked.  Her visual art work has been shown in cities including London, Tokyo and Portland and has been published in three monographs.

O'Neil, Tara Jane

Where Shine New Lights

Kranky

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. TARA JANE O’NEIL’s music is integrated and contextual, idiosyncratic and deeply psychedelic, akin to a lucid dream journal caught on magnetic tape. She appears to be interested in all sounds equally. In her tireless search for a music that mirrors and reflects her alchemical, deeply syncretic approach to sound, color, language, surface and texture, she has found herself in a somewhat singular category. Her concerns are free from fussing about form. Her albums posit some free space that owes more to improvisors and painters than singer-songwriters or new age synthesizer baths. She is still interested in songs, and she has always been a wordsmith, but her songs don't need to have words to signify. When words are utilized, she doesn't waste them. They are beautifully mystical outbursts of visionary poesis, but their narrative power is located within and informed by, the space, the harmonic color, the context in which they are sung. Choral voicings spread out across the stereo field like muted cloud formations split by sudden outbursts of vibrant color, verdant mosses on ancient stones, opal sized windows of clear blue set against a vast horizon. Pump organ drones swell and respirate, patient and slow, with softly resonant gongs from the roof of the world. This is music about healing, about listening, about surviving and transmuting the strange inheritance of language. Moving towards a direct perception of apparent reality through collaboration, breath, sound and song. TJO has always been a shapeshifter....