Stream: Tashaki Miyaki, ‘Girls On T.V.’

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Tashaki Miyaki (Photo by Marc Gabor)

After several years of wooing L.A. audiences with singles and live performances, Paige Stark and Luke Paquin are delivering a whole album of Tashaki Miyaki goodness in the form of “The Dream,” out April 7 via Metropolis Records.

In 2011, the band was born during a late night music session with their friend, L.A.’s treasured engineer/producer Joel Jerome. That night they conceived the song “Somethin’ Is Better Than Nothin,” and a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “All I have To Do Is Dream.” Since then, the duo released a batch of singles and an EP, but took their time in carefully crafting the 12 songs that appear on “The Dream,” ultimately produced by Stark and engineered by Dan Horne. The band says cinema inspires their music, like the power of David Lynch and his composer Angelo Badalamenti, or Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, in addition to music influences like Lou Reed, Neil Young, David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine.

While Stark’s voice never agitates, it’s like a warming sedative. The first single “Girls On T.V.” takes things to the edge of abrasive in a most satisfying way, turning up the fuzz to peak-level in moments that teeter on skull-crushing. Subject-wise, the song critiques the superficial obsession with affirmation through fame culture, as she sings from the perspective of a media-brainwashed girl. Stark explains: “Things like the emergence of reality TV stardom and social media celebrity have elevated fame culture to a new sphere. We are living in Andy Warhol meets Orwellian vision of the future and I find it terrifying. It’s all about “likes” and numbers and now our country is being run by a monster who was created by this very machine.”

||| Stream: “Girls On T.V.”

||| Live: Tashaki Miyaki perform every Monday at the Echo in March.