Tarnation

It's a good place to start. The ideal of lonesome beauty in an uncaring world. Doomed romantics, click those graceful heels and escape. "There's a place where I know", sings Paula Frazer. "We can walk in the flowers and the weeds where they grow..."

Given their stunning Folk & Western soundtracks, Frazer and her Tarnation combo are bound to conjure up evocative descriptions, and boundless praise. In 1995, Mojo writer Johnny Black's smitten live review (and Judy/Tarantino image) ended with the observation that, the seeds of something to cherish are there", and that if her roster of musicians could stabilise, "they'll blossom", and that's exactly what Tarnation have done with the new album 扢irador? With the same line-up consolidating around former member Paula, the darkly-brooding laments are more intense, the spooked guitar twangs more haunting, the rhythmic backdrop tougher, and the strength and range of Frazer's exquisite voice captured with greater clarity.

Music was something that Frazer reacted to from an early age. Raised in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia, a tiny village (pop: 260) in the Smoky Mountains region, she sung in her minister father's church choir while her mother played the organ and piano. A piano teacher, Paula's mother taught her piano and guitar, and exposed her to an increasingly wide range of music, steeped in classic American traditions. From an impressionable age, Paula would sing "mostly religious hymns and gospel. But we listened to lots of things around the house, like Billie Holliday, Gershwin, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers."

At age 14, the Frazer family shifted to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a community nestled deep in the heart of the Ozarks. At high school, she sung with various jazz groups, doing standards and her own, earliest songs, extending her experience by appearances in small cafes and dinner clubs at home and in towns like Springfield, Missouri and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Sautee Nacoochee was as pretty as a postcard, "but a bit lonely," Frazer confesses. Good training, then, for the lonesome-prairie emotion built into Tarnation's make- up. Eureka Springs was bigger, more active (pop:1600), "a really beautiful, Victorian town, a tourist haunt in the summer but just beautiful in winter". The tourism brought an influx of people to service it, from as far away as New York and New Orleans, and with this, cultural diversity (including a renowned gay scene) and more musical options (she namechecks Elvis Costello and The Pretenders from this era of listening). A friend from San Francisco encouraged Frazer, now 18, to move out to the Bay Area, where she still lives - "Like any city, it can be hard to live here but I fell in love with San Francisco, its history and its architecture". She currently lives above the Mission district, rich in Spanish influence, now clearly reflected in guitarist Alex Oropeza's shimmering world of tremelo.

In San Francisco, Frazer would play guitar and bass with local bands like Frightwig, Pleasant Day and Trial, and later on, Cloiter and Virginia Dare, and sing with the East

Bay-based Savina, an Eastern European-influenced womens choir who mostly performed Bulgarian choir music - it makes perfect sense, then, that Tarnation be signed by 4AD, who introduced Les Voix Bulgares phenomenon to the west in the mid-80's. By the time she formed Tarnation, in late 1992, Frazer抯 voice had grown into one comparable with the open-throated beauty of the Bulgarian nightingales (different voices have been called angelic, but when Frazer hits one of those falsetto notes, 99% of the competition dies away - as Frazer sings in 'Like A Ghost', "I fell into an angel's dream, I think I left my senses there...")

Mojo's observation that Frazer's voice combines, "Joan Baez purity with Patsy Cline emotion", is spot on. Cline's sensibility was inspired by a well-of-loneliness cant and a more stubborn, survivalist energy, while Baez's strengths were her vocal pitching and lyrical narrative, but Frazer's individuality far outstrips mere reverence.

There are other notable signposts to this out-west destination; Ennio Morricone's cinematic haunts, Angelo Badalamenti lush nobility, Roy Orbison, Heinz's 1963 pop classic 'Johnny Remember Me', Duane Eddy's tremelo magic, the West Coast 'Carmel'sound of The Mamas And Papas and Beach Boys ("dark surfer music", Paula describes it), American Music Club and Portishead's tender despair too. Oropeza, of Mexican parentage, brings a love of Birthday Party as well as Spanish/flamenco flavour, Dublin bassist Jamie Meagan (who played in an early line-up of punk-pop trio Puppy Love Bomb) a love of Joy Division and The Charlatans - "that kind of edge", she says. "I like that alternative, retro sound." Now it's like Judy Garland singing with the Reservoir Dogs.

Talk of Oropeza and Meagan brings us to Tarnation's new line-up. Affectionados of Tarnation's debut album 'I'll Give You Something To Cry About' (released on S.F. label Nuf Sed, run by Brandan Kearney, Tarnation's original steel guitarist) and the revised UK debut 'Gentle Creatures' will know that Frazer's musical foils used to be Lincoln Allen, Michelle Cemuto and Matt Sullivan. None of them remain; "they've started another band," she says. "Tarnation was my vision, but they had the idea of it being more of a partnership, which I was naive enough to try, but it didn抰 work out, so we parted ways."

Left to her own devices, Frazer was introduced to Oropeza and drummer Joe Byrnes, whose own trio Broken Horse ("Birthday Party kinda stuff with a Western swing and upright bass," says Paula) gives the boys their own creative outlet, leaving Paula free to run the roost - the new album 慚irador?is solely her songs and vocals but ironically, Tarnation sounds much more like a group.

The fourth member, Dublin bassist/multi-instrumentalist Jamie Meagan, is Paula's partner, who she met at work - her as an archeologist, he as a construction worker. In these hands, Tarnation's dynamics have quadrupled - they're just as likely to rock out (as on 'An Awful Shade Of Blue', 'Your Thoughts And Mine', the album's one cover version 'Little Black Egg', and the first single from 慚irador?'There's Someone') as they are supping from that ballad-heavy well of loneliness. Even in her most lamenting form - 'Christine', 'Like A Ghost', 'Wait' and 'ldly' ("in my minds 慹ye, I am love's pauper and I am going nowhere"), then they are songs that can soothe, not break, your own lonely heart.

Frazer admits to some hard times in her life, so despite her current settled heart, she still identifies with the characters in her songs. Some are fictiousness (the heroine of 'Destiny', who roams the "very mysterious" North Californian high prairie scrubland Frazer loves so) and some, like 'Christine' and 'There's Someone', based on real friendships. She might revel in history, the archeology of folklore, but you get the feeling that she likes to detach herself from her narratives, and stand back a little. And curiously enough, Mirador is Spanish for 'spectator'.

Which ties in with the name Tarnation, "Tarnation is slang for ‘hell’", says Frazer. People used to say it in place of 'damnation', so that they didn't have to swear. I chose the name because it's a comical and dark name at the same time. Sometimes there can be humour in sadness."

It's evidence of Frazer's happiness with the new Tarnation,'Destiny', who roams the "very mysterious" North Californian high prairie scrubland Frazer loves so) and some, like 'Christine' and 'There's Someone', based on real friendships. She might revel in history, the archeology of folklore, but you get the feeling that she likes to detach herself from her narratives, and stand back a little. And curiously enough, Mirador is Spanish for 'spectator'.

There are twelve sublime tracks on ’Mirador’ but Tarnation have included two extra hidden tracks - one a haunting, soul-on-fire shanty, Paula's wordless whistling sands moan lulling you to put it out in a watery grave, and an extended sequel to ‘Gentle Creatures’' 'The Well'. It's evidence of Frazer's happiness with the new Tarnation,'Destiny', who roams the "very mysterious" North Californian high prairie scrubland Frazer loves so) and some, like 'Christine' and 'There's Someone', based on real friendships. She might revel in history, the archeology of folklore, but you get the feeling that she likes to detach herself from her narratives, and stand back a little. And curiously enough, Mirador is Spanish for 'spectator'.

Frazer’s father was a minister; she grew up in a religious atmosphere. Yet her music reflects the faith-threatened, modem world of lost and alienated souls. Not that the singer sees any dichotomy in the scenario. "Gospel and secular music are so alike, they're just talking about different things", she says. "A lot of gospel music expresses loneliness and suffering, worshipping this entity that isn't tangible. I love stories and narrative. I love The Staple Singers but l'm more drawn to doing Western-style stuff - that's what really moves me.

Source: http://www.4ad.com/