The last two mini-albums from the Tara Clerkin Trio—2021’s In Spring and 2023’s On the Turning Ground—are so alluring and elusive that tagging them with genres feels like putting little stickers on the hull of a ship. Jazz folk, psych rock, bedroom kosmische—sure, but not always, and never for too long. Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and his brother, Patrick Benjamin sound like they are in the middle of a conversation with a vast continuum of music, from the Copenhagen art-pop bands to the West Coast jazz scene to the roots of the underground music of Bristol, where the trio calls home. The title track from their upcoming full-length record, coming in June on World of Echo, is a big new portal into their world and one of the best songs they’ve done yet.
With music like this—caught somewhere between Tortoise and half-time Stereolab—it might be easy to just catch the lyrics later on down the road. But Clerkin’s unobstructed voice singing the lines, “You’re leaping fields, I’m falling leaves/You’re busy streets, I’m moving feet” is the lighthouse in this foggy, two-chord song. She returns to the couplet several times as the band starts to claim more territory with oaky instrumentation from vibraphones, clarinets, and a climactic helix of synth sirens. It’s the sound of a swirl of leaves caught up in a little tornado: so simple, so natural, and yet somehow kind of amazing every time.
