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Music

Tamaryn on the Relationship Between Music and Image and Why Suede's Brett Anderson Rules

Tamaryn makes the sort of spacious, sexy, reverb-woozy shoegaze pop that’s perfect to listen to when you’re lying flat on your back in the grass. Preferably with an empty bottle of booze beside you. So we met up with her in a park.

Tamaryn and Rex John Shelverton released their second album, Tender New Signs, in the fall of 2012, but it’s the sort of spacious, sexy, reverb-woozy shoegaze pop that’s perfect to listen to when you’re lying flat on your back in the long grass. Preferably with an empty bottle of booze beside you. So meeting with the duo’s lead singer and namesake in Prospect Park, just as the sun is setting and the shadows are spreading to darkness, is the perfect setting. The pair are playing a Vogue-curated benefit for the park, which means the venue—a picturesque boathouse and its surrounding lawns—is full of super-svelte fashion types, decked out in flowy, showy gowns. They mill about placing bids on the designer garb at the the silent auction and rub shoulders with black leather-clad girls and boys who creep up close to the stage to sway along to Tamaryn. The Drums and Kilo Kish top off the bill. After their set I talked to Tamaryn about her itinerant and unconventional upbringing, the relationship between music and image, and why she loves Suede’s Brett Anderson so damn much.

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Noisey: Given that you worked in a record store for many years when you were younger, did being around all those iconic album sleeves influence you in how you wanted to present yourself as musician later?
Tamaryn: Growing up in record stores and vintage stores you learn the whole history of music and fashion and how it’s integrated and how they affect each other. I’m really into the entire cohesive presentation of being in a rock band, to the point where I'm pretty obsessive about things like graphic designers like Peter Saville, 23 Envelope, and Microdot, who did all of The Verve stuff and Oasis and and stuff like that. I’m really interested in the history of graphic design and the history of fashion and the history of music. I think that when you're trying to create iconography you need to know the lineage of it and of what you’re joining.

A documentary on 23 Envelope. Yay to music/graphics nerds who put ancient docs online.

How would you describe your personal style?
Ever-changing, I don't really follow trends. I’m really into classic looks and the romantic stuff—a blend of things. I worked at Resurrection Vintage for years when I was a teenager. Actually this dress I’m wearing was loaned to me for this event from them. It’s late 70s YSL.

What was the impetus for coming back to New York after living on the West Coast?
I lived in New York for nine years and then I moved to San Francisco in 2008 to make an album—and we've made two—and to really just focus on being musicians and nothing else. It’s been really great coming back. We feel like we’ve started having a bit of staying power and it’s been organic. Now when we tour, whether we are playing to 20 people in Salt Lake City or 600 in New York, people really know the music, they’re really emotionally connected to it and that’s the most you can ask for as a musician, especially in this day and age. I also kind of came back to New York to get more involved with what’s going on. I used to say no to a lot of fashion things, I used to say no to a lot of stuff that was based more on me being a female in a band, and wasn't so much about proving myself as a musician. Now that we have this big body of work, I'm totally open to whatever. So I'm kind of just seeing what happens.

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Tamaryn at Prospect Park wearing vintage YSL and jewelry by Jennifer Fisher. Pic nabbed from Tamaryn's instagram. So you really felt you had to prove yourself more because you are female?
Yes. If you notice in my music, my photos, or in my videos, it’s all about the music. I'm there, but you don't really know what I look like. I'm always hiding under my hair.

You are always hiding under your hair.
There’s a reason. I never wanted it to be a vanity project. I want it to be emotional. Now I feel like we’ve been doing it for so many years that I'm confident enough to kind of come out of the shadows and be more open to showing my face.

How was it going from dark to bleach blonde?
Rex and I have made two and half albums and instead of reinventing ourselves every five minutes, we’ve tried to hone our craft and get as good as we can get within the parameters we have set for ourselves. So my sort of crazy, teenage runaway self always want to change. So instead of doing it through the music, I change my hair.

You’re also working with Dee Dee from the Dum Dum Girls at the moment…
I'm doing creative consulting and collaborating with Dee Dee on the aesthetic side of her forthcoming album. I think that it's important for younger girls to see women in the same field working together. The instinctual notion women have that there is only room for one of us per job has to be destroyed. We are the ones with something new to say. It's finally our turn historically and there is a place for anyone who wants to step up. Also, we're best friends and its just fun to dream things up together.

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Brett Anderson photographed in 1992 in London.

I wanted to talk a bit about Brett Anderson. It seems like you're a bit of an Anglophile?
Yeah for sure, and it's really funny because in a couple of weeks we are actually playing in at a festival Taiwan with Suede. I’m a total Anglophile, but in the history of rock music, that’s the way it’s always been: American bands are influenced by English bands and vice versa. They always challenge each other.

What is it that you love about Brett?
Okay, this is a good example, there’s this really iconic photo of Brett sitting in his room in the early-90s and he's sitting on his bed reading a book and he has this giant poster of Low-era David Bowie. Brett is a fan and he took on aspects of his heroes and reinterpreted it and reinvigorated all these clichés. By doing that he inadvertently became his own thing. I’m just carrying that on. Now I need a picture of me in the bed in front of the picture of him in the bed. You know what I mean?

Kim is keen to lie on her back, in the grass, listening to Tamaryn in the very near future. Preferably today. She's on Twitter - @theKTB.

Style Stage is an ongoing partnership between Noisey & Garnier Fructis celebrating music, hair, and style.