Tarnation
Mirador
Reprise Records
Release Date: 1997
Picture a painted desert at sunset. The temperature is starting to cool; the locals are crawling out from under their rocks, where they have been hiding from the frying sun. You hear the sound of horses' hooves clippity-clopping across the packed earth. You squint your eyes, and just make out in the distance Dale Evans atop her roan mare, leading two other riders. You squint harder . . . and see that Dale is leading the Little Mermaid and the angel Gabriel.
Look closer. Are the members of this strange posse wearing headphones? You can't hear their soundtrack from such a distance, but they just might be listening to Tarnation.
Tarnation's music mixes earth, water and sky into a sometimes disorienting swirl of disparate elements. Mirador, the quartet's latest album, is sure to induce vertigo -- one minute the harmonies hold your head underwater, where all sound runs together; the next, the same chords launch you into the clouds so quickly you find yourself dizzy and out of breath. Balancing the extremes is the sometimes melancholy, sometimes wistful, but always earthy twang of the Western range.
Paula Frazer's vocals are at once carnal and cherubic, like ephemeral chanteuse
Julee Cruise might sound if she recorded cattle rustler campfire tunes. The rest of the band (all of whom switch off instruments) backs her up with hypnotizing skill, their tunes alternately wailing and subdued.
Mirador is a little lighter in tone, a little less, well, eerie than
the band's previous release, 1995's Gentle Creatures. Of course, that may be explained by its move from ethereal legend 4AD to the more earthbound label Reprise. There are definite changes in both style and substance, however nuanced and subtle they are.
That doesn't mean the music has suffered water (-ing down) torture. Major-label execs were wise enough to let the nice, if slightly confused, Tarnation people make their own sweet-and-sour blend of twisted country (almost) goth-pop. Songs like "Your Thoughts and Mine" and "Idly" layer the haunting and the hallowed with light and dark, fire and wind.
Mirador is a heady cocktail of elements normally found only in tension.
Some bands would simply blend those elements into a smooth, bland mess. But
Mirador leaves its various stripes intact and in harmony. Stirred,
not shaken.
-- Lindy Powell
powell@outersound.com
