Tara Jane O'Neil Albums (8)
What The Critics Say
Amid the hoopla surrounding strong 2006 releases from female musicians like Neko Case, Chan Marshall, Isobel Campbell, Ane Brun, Jolie Holland, and Beth Orton, the most affecting of the bunch may just be Tara Jane O'Neil's In Circles. Recorded in empty wooden houses around her current hometown of Portland, OR, In Circles' songs seem to arise out of the forest, rivers, sea, and dramatic vistas of the Pacific Northwest as though part of the aural and scenic landscape. O'Neil mostly eschews the twangy accents and full-band sound of 2004's You Sound, Reflect here, resulting in airier, less dense, and more delicate arrangements. She instead focuses her accomplished guitar playing on overlapping lines that chime like the clear, ringing tones Tom Verlaine pulls from his instrument. Accents like flute, melodica, and hushed percussion add to the ethereal nature of the music, but that doesn't make the record any less substantial. Where You Sound, Reflect seemed to bemoan the frail state of human relations, In Circles seeks balance back in natural surroundings, as imagery from the five elements -- Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water -- color O'Neil's lyrics at almost every turn. "Oh the light from the sky it pours into the sound," she sings hymn-like on "The Louder," while "The Looking Box" opens with a similarly evocative couplet: "Outside of my looking box/A breath waiting for me/It knows how light I'd be/One step down from my looking box/Where river meets the sea/And there it carried me." To match the mood, there's a timeless, acoustic Brit folk feel coursing through some songs ("A Partridge Song," "A Sparrow Song," and the Nick Drake-like "Need No Pony"), while others are swathed in misty atmospheric tape loops and textured guitar layers ("Fundamental Tom," and instrumental album bookends "Primer" and "This Beats"). "Blue Light Room" even reprises a classic Nashville Skyline-country feel, with assistance from the graceful pedal steel of Lewy Longmeyer (Michael Hurley Band). No matter the styles or influences, O'Neil's vocals -- a whispered siren's cry, like Hope Sandoval crossed with Orton -- resonate seamlessly with the music, reinforcing the record's organic feel. Not a word or tone seems superfluous here, each element's arrangement serving the song in harmony with the rest, echoing the Euclidean perfection of the album's namesakes. ~ John Schacht, All Music Guide
'You Sound, Reflect'
Release Date 1/1/2004
Tracks 12
Label Quarterstick
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What The Critics Say
As Tara Jane O'Neil's voice quavers though the opening of the shifting lament "Howl," a lilting summer ballad that exhibits a feel similar to that of an Americanized Fairport Convention, there is a shyness that emanates, but elements of bravery too, as if she's aware that she is about to divulge too much information but is unable to stop herself. By holding all of this under pressure, seemingly restraining the fullness of the possibilities, O'Neil expertly builds the momentum of her third long-player, You Sound, Reflect, by silently winding up all of this confused energy and then dropping it to split the chaos with razors of clarity. O'Neil's previous outings have all had tension and urgency baked in, but it is with You Sound, Reflect that she superbly constructs the cinematic feel of her songs to convey a storyline. Through warm guitars, hollow banjos, layered fiddles, lush vocals, samples, etc., O'Neil beautifully creates an environment for her lyrics to breathe and grow and create a display simultaneously modest and showy, but most importantly, a deep emotional landscape to be lost in. The lovely opening instrumental, "Take the Waking," unfolds with keyboard and percussive guitar loops underneath warm and bright decorative guitars and wordless vocals that churn the sound into a confusing dichotomy: sweet and sinister. It is a perfect opener since the majority of the record flirts with both adjectives, dispensing a lovely melody here followed by a disturbing turn of phrase there, while somehow maintaining a fragile balance between the two. Via this balance, O'Neil inexplicably embodies an emotional side that, like all well-conceived art, brings to light the fascination with conflict and resolve inherent in the human condition, but what sets You Sound, Reflect apart from so many recordings is its ambition in covering so much ground instead of closing in on the small details of a conflict, such as the classic songwriter's topic of unrequited love. O'Neil weaves in and out of her variances the same way she, or anyone, might spend an afternoon contemplating the fortunes and misfortunes of the past, recognizing the turbulences and reporting on them, but refusing to dwell too much. The result is a very human, honest recording. Perhaps it is pompous to intellectualize You Sound, Reflect in this way, but it is a conundrum in that it is such an artsy yet breezy and accessible affair, difficult to pin down by only mentioning the technicalities of its makeup. ~ Gregory McIntosh, All Music Guide
'Music for a Meteor Shower'
Release Date 8/20/2002
Tracks 16
Label Tiger Style
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'In the Sun Lines'
Release Date 1/1/2001
Tracks 10
Label Quarterstick
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What The Critics Say
Two years after the accolades of her solo debut Peregrine, former Rodan vocalist Tara Jane O'Neil returns with her wily, mysterious, unclassifiable In the Sun Lines. Not only has O'Neil recorded and engineered this album; she also provides the largest part of the musical tapestry that employs her on guitar, bass, drums, pianos, banjo, accordion, melodica, and more. She recorded everywhere: from a condo in Louisville to her Ludlow St. apartment in New York City to a cabin upstate, carrying her mixing deck with her everywhere. And while she had help from friends such as Rachel's pianist Rachel Grimes, and Noel Hawley on cello and Rhodes piano, among others, the sounds and textures of In The Sun Lines are distinctly O'Neil's. While there are some similarities to Peregrine in the mystery dimension, musically O'Neil has reinvented the wheel. Sounds and melodies crop up and float, hovering over a particular song for awhile ("All Jewels Small") before transmuting themselves into a soundscape without an end; there are others that evoke the slow, tender sambas of Tom Jobim's Sweet Bargaining; and still others that ask more questions than could ever be answered in a three or four minute pop song: ("The Wind You Came Here On"); and the American Gothic darkness created by guitars undressing themselves in the twilight ("Your Rats Are"), with Dan Littleton on vocals. If this album seems like a montage, or disjointed and unrealistic in reach for a pop record, then the listener may not doing the album justice because O'Neil's creation is seamless: always subdued, full of a tension that is both elegantly fraught with brokenness and the desire for transcendence; and one that imbues the listener with an imparted grace of acceptance and resolve. While the music here is delicate and, at times, heartbreakingly beautiful, there isn't anything remotely fragile about it. O'Neil's post-rock constructivist approach to creating songs is anything but passive. Instead her murky, shimmering, world is built a piece or a sound at a time, carefully layered, and then grafted and sewn together to find whatever it is that the song thinks it needs to express itself through her. In The Sun Lines is a glorious new chapter in the catalog of an enigma. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Peregrine is Tara Jane O'Neil's first solo record after spending years in such ultra-indie groups as Rodan, Retsin, and the Sonora Pine. Here O'Neil shows a much more intimate portrait of herself than you probably picked up in the road of Rodan. The experimental quiescence of sonorous slow pop project the Sonora Pine is a better starting point. Peregrine is melancholy and moving, beautifully lonely. This is the best sorrowful songwriting since Damon & Naomi's Playback Singers. To do this album, O'Neil holed up with a guitar, bass, piano, thumb piano, balalaika -- and some blues. First, she crafted her emotions into songs and played all the instruments. Then she added the studio guitarist Dan Littleton (Ida), noted jazz drummer Andrew Barker, and violinist Samara Lubelski (the Sonora Pine, Hall of Fame). Together they put just enough instrumentation on these sparse songs to keep the emotion from being completely naked. ~ Tom Schulte, All Music Guide
