DEPRAVITY and desolation, according to film director Terry Gilliam, are in these days. The success of Pile Fiction and Seven has heralded in a new era of public consciousness that at very least attempts to understand varying hearts of darkness. Personally, I credit (and do not blame) David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks for this growing awareness of unease, which really is where and why Tarnation enter the picture.
From San Francisco, Tarnation (Paula Fraser, vocals Alex Orepeza, lead guitar Joe Byrnes, drums and John Wischmann, bass) are a cult country `n' western quartet. They are cultish enough not to fill Whelans, yet certainly worthy enough to merit a return visit to a bigger venue, such is their quality.
But country `n' western? Yes, but not in the traditional sense. Songs like Do You Fancy Me? and Two Wrongs Don't Make Things Right sound as if Patsy Cline were still alive but suffering from an overdose of illegally prescribed drugs. I Didn't Mean It is the kind of song played in the background to a scene of webbed deceit, overt violence and sordid sex. Tarnation's music is, therefore, deliberately leisurely and totally cinematic, invoking alternate musical comparisons with the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and John Barry, two composers the band name check near the end of their brief but occasionally mesmerising set.
Ambient Country? Like the visual imagery they wish to convey and precisely like a song title of theirs Tarnation are an awful shade of blue distorted, askew, throbbing, with doubt, yet fully in tune with the times they live in. Only from America ...
