Tara Clerkin Trio: "Somewhere Good"

"Jazz folk, psych rock, bedroom kosmiche-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."

"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."

The Tara Clerkin Trio, consisting of Tara Clerkin, Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Patrick Benjamin, creates music that resists easy genre classification, drawing from diverse influences including Copenhagen art-pop, West Coast jazz, and Bristol underground music. Their recent mini-albums showcase an elusive, alluring sound that exists in conversation with multiple musical traditions. The title track from their forthcoming full-length album, releasing in June on World of Echo, exemplifies their distinctive approach. Clerkin's clear vocals anchor the composition with poetic lyrics, while the band layers oaky instrumentation including vibraphones, clarinets, and synthesizers to create a dynamic, evolving soundscape that balances simplicity with complexity.

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