Tara Jane ONeil 'A Ways Away' album

The work of Tara Jane ONeil has always innately crossed genres and boundaries - like several genies emerging from a single lamp. Every singer wants to be a painter, every guitarist a singer, every songwriter a poet and every producer an alchemist. ONeil is skilled at all these things and on A Ways Away [KLP207], her fifth album and first for K, she has wielded all of her powers. A Ways Away is a song cycle, generous and concise, direct and uncompromising.

TJO’s new LP is primarily the offering of a singer-songwriter, but there is an elegant attention to detail in the mix that will please all those in need of great headphone jams, electronic minimalist drone magic, and heroic adventure. But A Ways Away is driven by the singer and the songs. On this record, she has put her voice out front, and as in the past, the vocals are perversely and meticulously arranged and gorgeously sung. There’s compassion and concern, wisdom and heartbreak, moving on and waking up in these songs.

The elements of her live show and her studio craft meet here. There’s some sorcery and exorcism, and there are questions that stand on their own. As a dream is surprising and mysterious, so can be her performance, haunting, masterful, arresting. Her ability to divine the finest players in any town to create shifting and often spontaneous bands makes each show unique, a thing of legend. TJO conjures up all of your favorite singer-songwriters, painters and poets as if they are all there in her songs, a dialogic meeting in the air. It is an expansive and dynamic mystery sound. There is space in it, there is volume and electricity in it, and there is no fear. ONeil coaxes gamelan sonorities or tiny gongs out of her guitar, thick dissonant tone clusters or rapid finger picking to support her mellifluous call.

Contributions on A Ways Away came from Jana Hunter, Mirah, Osa Atoe (New Bloods), Geoff Soule (F***), Jean Cook and Daniel Littleton (Ida) and The Ecstatic Tambourine Orchestra. While writing her own music, Tara Jane ONeil has also collaborated with Papa M, Ida, Mirah, Michael Hurley, Jackie-O Mother****er and King Cobra, among others; she has scored soundtracks for film and theater; and records instrumental music under the moniker Strange Clouds. TJO was a founding member of some influential and prescient bands back in the day, like Rodan, Retsin, and the Sonora Pine. ONeil is also an accomplished visual artist whose paintings and drawings have exhibited worldwide; Wings. Strings. Meridians. A Blighted Bestiary, her second book of paintings to appear in the last decade, was published by Yeti last year.

TJO will be practicing her meticulous extrapolation, her ecstatic melody, her sorcery, in locations all over the globe in 2009. In May she starts in Europe and moves slowly westward.

Tara Jane ONeil tour dates

Feb 26, 2009 - Brooklyn, NY Cinders Gallery *
Feb 27, 2009 - Annondale-on-Hudson, NY Bard College *
Feb 28, 2009 - Brooklyn, NY Market Hotel (Benefit for Arthur Magazine) *
Mar 01, 2009 - Baltimore, MD Zodiac *
Mar 18 - 21 - Austin, TX SXSW
Apr 1, 2009 - Anacortes, WA The Department of Safety #
Apr 3, 2009 - Vancouver, BC Biltmore Cabaret #
Apr 4, 2009 - Portland, OR Aladdin Theater #
Apr 5, 2009 - Arcata, CA TBA #
Apr 30, 2009 - Portland, OR Fontanelle Gallery

* = w/ Jana Hunter
# = w/ Mirah

Tara Jane ONeil biography
Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tara Jane ONeil creates melodic and experimental music under her own name and in collaboration with other artists, bands, and filmmakers. Her work innately crosses genres and boundaries—drawings that morph from natural forms to linear abstractions, melodic songcraft melded with experimental noise; live performances that range from solo construction to large ensemble improvisation; and dance, film and theater scores-each telling the story in a dialect all their own. Though they spring from the same source, each piece takes a distinct form—several genies emerging from a single lamp.

Her musical life started at the tender age of 19 as the bass player for the influential and short lived art-punk ensemble Rodan in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. During the 1990’s, ONeil played in the duo Retsin and non-epic chamber rock band the Sonora Pine, and collaborated with many other groups. In New York City, she recorded her first solo album, Peregrine, in the bathtub of her Ludlow Street apartment; its 2000 release on Quarterstick Records marked the start of a series of increasingly complex and beautiful solo releases, most recently In Circles (2006.)

Since 2003 she has lived in Portland, Oregon. While writing her own music, ONeil has also collaborated with Papa M, Ida, Mirah, Michael Hurley, Jackie O’Motherfucker, and the King Cobra; scored soundtracks for film and theater; and records instrumental music under the moniker Strange Clouds. ONeil is also an accomplished visual artist whose paintings and drawings have exhibited worldwide, and appeared on several record covers and in numerous publications; two books of her artwork have been published, Who Takes A Feather (Map Press, Japan, 2003) and Wings. Strings. Meridians: A Blighted Bestiary (Yeti, 2007.) She recently completed her 5th full-length (and the first for K); A Ways Away will be released in May, 2009.

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Tara Jane ONeil - A Ways Away