Staff Reviews

Tara Jane O’Neil - A Ways Away

Review by Alexander Tudor

Last year, Grouper’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill only made it into the DiS Lost of ’08 round-up, at the very end of the year. I»

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the work of tara jane oneil has always innately crossed genres and boundaries - like several genies emerging from a single lamp. every singer wants to be a painter, every guitarist a singer, every songwriter a poet and every producer an alchemist. oneil is skilled at all these things and on a ways away [klp207], her fifth album and first for k, she has wielded all of her powers. a ways away is a song cycle, generous and concise, direct and uncompromising. tjo's new lp is primarily the offering of a singer-songwriter, but there is an elegant attention to detail in the mix that will please all those in need of great headphone jams, electronic minimalist drone magic, and heroic adventure. but a ways away is driven by the singer and the songs. on this record, she has put her voice out front, and as in the past, the vocals are perversely and meticulously arranged and gorgeously sung. there's compassion and concern, wisdom and heartbreak, moving on and waking up in these songs. the elements of her live show and her studio craft meet here. there's some sorcery and exorcism, and there are questions that stand on their own. as a dream is surprising and mysterious, so can be her performance, haunting, masterful, arresting. her ability to divine the finest players in any town to create shifting and often spontaneous bands makes each show unique, a thing of legend. tjo conjures up all of your favorite singer-songwriters, painters and poets as if they are all there in her songs, a dialogic meeting in the air. it is an expansive and dynamic mystery sound. there is space in it, there is volume and electricity in it, and there is no fear. oneil coaxes gamelan sonorities or tiny gongs out of her guitar, thick dissonant tone clusters or rapid finger picking to support her mellifluous call.
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