Words by Jason Lee
Still from “Double” music video dir. by Tine Hill of Gustaf in Lake Placid, NY
If you’re into fun and no we’re not talking about the lower-case band ending in a period who always struck us as a somewhat po-faced, self-serious lot (no disrespect!) but rather F-U-N rendered in all caps with dashes in between to indicate being serious enough about having fun to actually spell the word out and also if you’ve been around the Brooklyn indie scene from any time between the late Goodbye Blue Monday days up to the present day…
…then you must surely know about singer-songwriter-guitarist-rubber-chicken-collector Tarra Thiessen who alongside bassist/co-vocalist Natalie Kirch and a cavalcade of rotating drummers founded Sharkmuffin and became a mainstay of said scene for the better part of a decade first appearing in the pages of The Deli (back when we had pages) in a 2013 writeup with an anonymous writer writing that “hopefully one day will come when we won’t act surprised when we find an all-female band that truly rocks” (oof!) going on to ordain Sharkmuffin to be just such a band on the basis of their single “Mermaid Sex Slave” and EP 1097 then more recently in a writeup on the band’s “outlandish sci-fi rock opera” EP Gamma Gardening from 2019…
…but here in 2024 what’s most striking to this writer is how all the projects Tarra’s been part of that we know of and there’s been plenty besides Sharkmuffin are across-the-board F-U-N where said fun is far from being absent-minded but instead just the opposite cuz being seriously fun or even more so funny is a special talent indeed for a musician seeing as there’s real multi-tasking involved in being skilled and engaging musically…
…but also playful and joy-provoking and making you go “hmmm” or even “haha” whether in service of purely silly or pointedly satirical aims like on Sharkmuffin numbers like “Tampons Are For Sluts” and anyway we gotta give it up for any band that can get on NPR’s All Songs Considered with songs that would surely make Terry Gross blush…
…but hey that’s all just preamble cuz we’re all about 2024 baby which includes Tarra belonging to local art-rock combo Gustaf who acc. to Brooklyn Pescatarian are “one of New York’s hardest working…and most reliably fun bands” (emphasis ours) as their percussionist and backup vocalist, and as the singular brain trust behind Tea Eater, which if Sharkmuffin was like the Bikini Kill of Brooklyn’s Roaring Tenties then the Lake-Placid-born-pandemic-bedroom-project-turned-band Tea Eater is more akin to Le Tigre all nervy live-wire buzzing new-wavey energy drawing upon an expanded sonic palette including electronics, percussion, drum loops, and pianos laid over a backbone of rocked out guitar and live drums…
…just take the opening two tracks off Tea Eater’s debut LP Obsession for example released back in October 2023 via A Diamond Heart Production & La Fam Recordings, produced and mixed by Drew Vandenburg (Bambara/Faye Webster/Of Montreal), which starts off with a shimmying surf-rock-reminiscent rave-up in the form of the “Double” which minus the manically trilling flute could have its origin in the time Tarra had a Ventures’ compilation stuck in her vehicle’s CD player for about a year when residing in New Jersey a song which appears to be about murdering and burying a friend’s self-inhibiting, shadow-self doppelgänger (or one’s own?) which makes good use of Tea Eater’s squeaky vocal hiccups…
…followed by the more upbeat title track that’s all about “mak[ing] your passion” and “bring[ing] love and joy” which is a similar theme when you think about it while sounding halfway between ‘90s-era Beck and a hula dancing tune so you can see there’s plenty of musical diversity right from the get-go…
…and then there’s the song about how the DMV sucks (“Fuck the DMV”) and then the one comprised of Jack Nicholson quotes from the movie As Good As It Gets (“Jack Nicholson”) and the one about managing cynical Brooklyn scenesters while still managing personal growth (“Has Been”—as in “Brooklyn has been…fine” and btw Thiessen came to NYC from Iowa back in the day) so yeah in a nutshell Obsession is a seriously fun album that during its modest run-time covers a kaleidoscopic range of styles and slice-of-life themes…
…we’re just sorry it didn’t include the one about deciding to start a podcast (“I’m Starting A Podcast”) or the one about being reincarnated as a little white dog in a gated community called “Little White Dog (In A Gated Community)” but hey they’re available elsewhere and it’s a smart move fun-wise keeping the running time tight and going out on a strong note with a rocket blast of fuzzed-out psychedelic guitar squall at the conclusion of “Cosmic Coconut” played over hypnotic riddims laid down by Vramshabouh on bass and Alex Tuisku on drums while when playing live Tea Eater more often features Lindsey Ann Lawless on bass and Abdon Valdez on drums with Vramshabouh switching to second guitar and we’re already looking forward to what’s to come…
FFO: Amyl and the Sniffers, Shybaby, Santogold, Snōōper, The Vovos, waffles, butter, Bee Girls, and the Beatles’ John Lennon