Words by Cristi Barco / Cover image by Gina Detres
If you haven’t experienced the joyful debauchery of watching Talon live, do I have something for you!
I first experienced Talon, the rock-pop four-piece made up of Zena, Mara, Lauren, and MK, at Purgatory last year for their anniversary show. I’d just moved to New York, so the show ushered in a new era of pining and scream-singing and hugging your friends darn hard—the year of tiger-beat tom-fuckery. (I think that’s in the Chinese calendar, right?) See the fine print under the year of the tiger.
Anniversary Show, Purgatory, 2023, photo credit: @cristibarco
Talon’s music is anarchically fun. Their music is experimental, making each of the band members feel unserious, daring, and sincere. Sylvia, my favorite track, is a lament for a girl that seems too perfect for this world. The song quickly transitions between five or six different tempos, a dizzying experience, fitting to its topic. The chorus, as catchy as it is cleansing, lets you purge out a demon, only to beg for it back at the spoken bridge, “Bloody Mary / Say It Three Times / I’m spinning in the bathroom mirror / will you come back to me, baby?”
Their whole EP, Not Dreams, tip-toes across a full spectrum of emotions relating to being in love, the past, or some girl. Talon’s rhythms and lyricism bounce from heavy, rich, and complex; to stupid and lighthearted in a nanosecond. Good in music and good in life!
Covering them for The Deli at Purgatory for Jenny Alien’s single release of “Stupid Girl,” I wasn’t surprised when a concert-goer I’d met on the stairs whispered into my ear, “They seem like a live sitcom, each cast to be in this band. I think I’m having a gay awakening.”
Yes! I thought to myself, that’s exactly it. Also, dear concert-goer, I hope you’re surviving that.
Purgatory, photo credit: @ginadetres
It seemed like a job greater than fate for this band, who fit together like a gay puzzle-piece, to find each other. So I sat down with them after the show to expose the tale of their magical come-up-ence.
Prologue: Once upon a time, four gay rocker chicks and a Deli Mag journalist sat in a car parked outside of Purgatory to avoid the pouring rain. The journalist pulled out her voice memo and pressed play, but the rocker chicks got scared so she had to hide it behind her back.
Then she asked:
What is your origin story?
Lauren: Mara and MK are betrothed and Zena and I joined through the app Lex.
MK: We posted, “hey, this is the kinda music that we’re making! We’re looking for a drummer or bassist!” We described the kind of music we were making, like Sheryl Crow style stuff, but didn’t post any music. We only really had bad demos that me and Mara spent months on.
Zena: She didn’t even listen to either of us play.
MK: The vibes were just so right.
All: We’re Lauren (she/her), MK (she/her), Zena (they/them), and Mara (she/her) by the way.
You can practice and play better but you can’t do that with vibes. Who’s the songwriter?
MK: All of us. Somebody usually brings an idea to band practice, and we jam on it. We write quickly, like a song in 15 minutes, but the challenge is going back and killing our darlings; being discerning about the sections of the songs that we write.
Lauren: The second to last song we played, we wrote in a day.
The darker, heavy rock song?
Mara: That song is so fucking good.
MK: By the way, I loved playing that. It’s on the new record, comes out TBD.
Zena: Hopefully Summer. We’re going on a tour in April and we’re hoping to have a single out.
How did you guys start playing in New York?
MK: I’m literally so glad you asked that. Here.
Lauren: It all started here.
Zena: It was at Purgatory.
MK: We really wanted a gig.
Mara: I think Zena found it. Someone was, like, looking for a band to fill in because somebody dropped out.
MK: In two days!
Mara: It was at 5pm on Memorial Day.
Zena: On a Monday.
Mara: And we were opening for this lovely girl graduating from NYU, who was the headliner…reading her English Thesis.
MK: Reading it.
Lauren: So we opened for her.
Mara: Our friends came, and it was really sweet. We covered “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne.
Did momentum pick up from that initial show?
Lauren: We started playing a lot of shows.
MK: We started meeting some other bands we became friends with, which helped build our network of bands that we like to play shows with.
Lauren: We did Arlene’s a couple times.
Is there anything you guys intend to voice to the world?
Zena: I feel like there’s always been a ’90s theme.
Mara: I think in the beginning we’d write for live. Our goal wasn’t just to make good songs, but do something that sounded good for an audience.
Lauren: Something that we wanted to play over and over.
Mara: Then we developed deep friendships and love for each other. I think that shows on stage.
That’s definitely one of the reasons I wanted to write about you guys. I was talking to this girl that came in and she said, “I feel like I’m watching a ’90s sitcom.” Like, every one of you was casted to be in this band. I can’t believe you guys found each other!
Lauren: On Lex!
On Lex no less.
MK: My mom watched us and was like you guys are a really great band. You have one of each type, like different types of lesbians. This was her read: You have Lauren, who’s the rock drummer, you have Mara who’s kinda emo, you have Zena who’s the artsy one, and you, you’re the cheerleader.
Lauren: We’re like Charlie Brown.
MK To Lauren: What was the joke you made about the beginning of us writing music?
Lauren: They’re all about some girl.
MK: Always about the past or some girl. But lately, we’ve attempted to write more conceptually, more expansively.
Mara: Did you hear the song about Tammy?
MK: So we had been going up to Connecticut, to Peacedale Studios, to record our album. We’ve just been writing there too. We stay at the house, it’s this guy Greg’s house.
This guy is another character in the sitcom.
MK: He is awesome.
Zena: He is the most lesbian middle-aged straight man you’ve ever met.
Lauren: When I told my mom I was going to some random guy’s house in Connecticut, she was like, “Please, who is he?” “Mom, no I promise you.”
He’s Greg, Mom. He’s Greg.
Lauren: He’s Greg!
Mara: So we’re in line for groceries, and this woman has bracelets on both arms up to her elbows.
MK: Like silver bangles. Literally thumb to elbow. How many bracelets are on your wrist? She makes us guess. We’re like, 65? And she’s like, “Mmore.” 75? “More.” More. We finally say, 100? And she says “Less.” She goes, “92.” On each arm! “Better than having it in my body,” she says. We thought she was insulting MK’s nose ring, but turns out she was a recovering drug addict.
Greg was like, “Ooh, that lady! I love that lady.” She’s a town legend! She said that each arm weighs 3 pounds.
What do you guys wanna do? Talon goals?
MK: Prosper. Have a baby.
Mara: I’m giving birth to a baby tomorrow.
Zena: Don’t talk about your cyst on the record. Don’t do that. We’re going on tour in April for a week.
MK: The last couple of years we were like, We should do this. Then, this year, Zena who’s been doing an awesome job booking a ton of stuff for multiple bands (Zena plays in Junebug, Angel Hair no. 12, manages Avatareden and more through @zeroscent), was like, “if we’re going to do this, we need to like actually start doing it,” so she started booking.
ZENA’S DECLASSIFIED TOUR SURVIVAL GUIDE:
Zena: First you route your tour, you decipher what is cool, who is cool, venues, where is queer.
Mara: Like, who is going to take a cast like us.
Lauren: With open arms.
Zena: You find the venues, find the bands, then slowly start to piece everything together. It’s really fun, it’s like a puzzle.
How many stops?
Zena: Seven shows.
MK: Staying with friends or family if we have them there.
Mara: I want to get a motel.
You’re going to get lice.
Mara: Don’t say that, I already have a cyst.
MK: Did you know that in Turkey the animals have lice?
Mara: Can’t wait for you to listen to this back.
I’m gonna be pissing myself, for sure. [(I was]).
MK: Another goal is to put out an album this year. A big goal is to be intentional with how we roll out our music in the next year, make really cool visuals.
Lauren: Marketing and all that.
Zena: Also, building community has been at the forefront since the beginning.
Mara: It’s not just about asking for support, but also giving it. Like we played a Halloween show with Jenny Alien. They were so awesome and now we played with them tonight.
Last question: What has been your favorite gig together?
Zena: Mine was the SnowBall at Sultan Room.
MK: The TV Eye show.
Mara: We also played an anniversary show at Purgatory last year. After that show there were two raccoons fucking and then another raccoon came to break it up.
Was he jealous?
Mara: Yeah they were like GNE-GNE-GNE *angry racoon sounds* really going at each other. Do you need me to spell that for you?
Is it G-N-E? I’ll name this piece that.
Mara: Gne-gne-gne. Three angry raccoons fucking.
Maybe four.