Tamaryn

The best of the current crop of neo-shoe gaze, reviewed in Blurt print, but also up on line now...

TAMARYN
Tender New Signs
(Mexican Summer)

Tamaryn, the dream pop singer from New Zealand (and lately San Francisco), takes another slow dive through atmospherics in this second album, teaming again with her long-time producer/guitarist Rex John Shelverton to build luminous textures of sound. You could sink into the Tamaryn aesthetic like a soft pillow, so enveloping, so welcoming and gentle the sound, yet these are not formless exercises in texture. No, all nine of these slow-moving cuts are built on actual melodies, simple enough to stick right away, radiant enough to hang like this album's overtones, well after they are finished.

Tender New Signs is meant for all-the-way-through listening, preferably horizontal, preferably with headphones, yet a couple of the songs stand out. "I'm Gone," the opener, shimmers like rainbows atop a puddle slicked with oil, yet there's structure under the glow. "No Exits" brings the vocals up, adding a bit of warming vibrato in to Tamaryn's weightless, disembodied style. Behind her, around her, guitar chords crash and break like ocean surf, as in nature, even the violence radiates serenity.

DOWNLOAD: "I'm Gone" "No Exits" -JENNIFER KELLY