TARAH WHO?

There is something special about having a conversation with someone who knows exactly what they want, someone who knows where they are going and will stop at nothing to make sure it happens. It’s in the way they look at you and in the way they appear to listen beyond what you are saying, as if they are searching for even the tiniest fragment of information or inspiration, instantly analyzing your opinions. It’s something that separates the driven, the focused and the successful from everyone else.

It’s in their eyes.

I experienced all of this while chatting with Tarah G. Carpenter; singer, guitarist and songwriter of Tarah Who?

A gap on their current tour supporting Life of Agony allowed Tarah Who? to appear second on a three-band bill here at the Olympic Café on a Thursday night, an interesting stopover for Tarah and her current bandmates, Christine Agozzino on drums and Ash Orphan on bass.

Tonight, those people who didn’t come missed something very special – it was almost surreal to be watching this gig take place whilst sitting on the floor off to the side of the stage, snapping shots and making mental notes, because we knew for sure that we’d not get this kind of opportunity again. The set began with some shrugs and laughs from the band, now reconciled with the fact that there clearly wasn’t going to be many people watching, before, rightfully, it was straight into the music. To be frank, the appeal was instant.

Tarah Who? may be many of the things we’ve read them described as – punk, rock, punk rock, progressive punk rock, grunge even – but they’re also not. While the attitude is the same, the musicianship on display and the arrangements of the songs practically excludes them from such black and white descriptions. As soon as you’ve listened to just a handful of songs, it’s obvious: Tarah Who? sound like Tarah Who?

It is a sound that has been built and shaped over the past decade.

After learning to play the drums at 14 and then teaching herself how to play guitar by learning the songs of Alanis Morissette from a book, Tarah G. Carpenter eventually began writing her own songs. “I started playing guitar because I had something to say,” but at the time she was too self-conscious to share what she had to say with any of her family or friends here in France.

Tarah then moved to L.A. in 2006, and with no one familiar enough in her life there to judge her, she began recording, adding drums and bass herself to produce demos of her songs while gigging alone with an acoustic guitar.

Fast forward to 2016 and after spending the years in-between recording an album (2014’s Little Out There) and touring with various musicians, Tarah Who? released the EP, Federal Circle of Shame, described by Tarah as the beginning of the sound she wanted.

After working with many musicians finally finding the people who were right for her, from 2018 the band’s touring and recording line up of Tarah, Coralie Hervé on drums and Joey Southern on bass eventually became a duo of simply Tarah and Coralie, a lineup that could perhaps, at this point in time, be described as the “classic” Tarah Who? lineup – if it wasn’t for the fact that Tarah hasn’t stopped, and clearly won’t stop, progressing.

In 2021 they released the excellent Supposedly, A Man album, recorded under the conditions imposed on all of us by the pandemic, a catchy, addictive, powerful and thought-provoking piece of work.

All of which leads us to now, and the next stage of this journey – the 2023 release of their newest album, The Collaboration Project, an album put together while the world reopened for business and which is, as if it needed explaining, a collection of songs featuring collaborations with other, mostly female artists, a creative endeavour to work with other artists from around the world, to appeal to both fanbases in order to increase each other’s exposure and to show how independent musicians can work together without the competition that is created between bands who are signed to big labels. With lyrical subjects ranging from ageing, lockdowns, drive and greed, this album is clearly following the progression from those earlier recordings. It’s another excellent album, it’s just full of sound. It’s polished, but not in a way that takes the edge away from any of it. And when you read through the credits and collaborations printed on the back of the CD you realise exactly what you’re listening to – it’s a piece of art.

And it is this new album that Tarah Who? are on the road to promote, all of which brings us back here to the 18th arrondissement and the Olympic Café …

After the initial disappointment at the lack of a crowd, once the band were into their set it began to feel like a privilege to have the opportunity to see them this way. The atmosphere and the in-between song chat was informal, almost like attending a rehearsal, but the impact of those songs and the clarity of the lyrics were as full-on as you would expect in front of a packed hall.

Afterwards when we caught up with a self-declared exhausted Tarah upstairs in the bar, we ended our brief chat by asking her light-heartedly if she was going to “make it” … meaning, in her current state of feeling exhausted if she was going to manage to make it all the way to London in their van tomorrow, but the nuance of the question was lost in the moment and she shot us a look that informed us that OF COURSE she was going to “make it!”

It was all there in her eyes.

Tarah G. Carpenter knows exactly where she is going, and we can’t wait to find out where that is.