Tamaryn’s music may be challenging to categorize because of its seamless fusion of shoegaze, pop and rock, among other genres, but one fact is certain: it needs to be blaring through your stereo and headphones immediately if it isn’t already.

Working with class acts like the Dum Dum Girls and artist Richard Phillips, Tamaryn is not a newbie to the music scene, but she certainly is underrated and has somehow been masked behind her immense talent and depth as an artist and producer. Before heading out on tour with Lush, we caught up with the ethereal, ember-haired melody maestra and discovered 10 things you should know about her.

She Doesn’t View Music as a Job, But She Treats It Like One

“I've been playing in bands since I was a teenager, but in about 2004, I started recording as Tamaryn, and I didn't release anything officially until in 2008 and [have] put out three records [to date],” she explains. 

“Career is a tricky word for me because I don't really see it as a career, because it's not really making me a lot of money, but it is a life path — I would say more than a career — and something that I'm compelled to do, and I would say that the moment that that happened was the moment I started figuring out the formula of what I consider to be good songs; I started off more in the nouveau wave, kind of experimental world in New York and did a lot of just getting up on stage and making things up — improv-ing — and then when I hit the precipice of actually writing songs, that was when I got really addicted and figured that I'd probably be doing it for a long time.”

Collaboration is Crucial

According to Tamaryn, her formula for songwriting first derives from not only her own efforts, but partnering with others, as well: “Working with people I already respect as songwriters who I think I could fuse my style with theirs, that hasn't happened before.” She also considers the basic formulas in pop music — verse, chorus, verse, chorus; breakdown, chorus out — to be “classic” and essential. 

Her Creative Process Aligns With Being a Fan First

Lyrics never come first for Tamaryn. “In my mind, the lyrics — less so the lyrics, more so the vocals — come from the emotional world that the music itself creates,” she claims. 

“I always imagined myself as my biggest fan of the band and then someone who's possessed or compelled to get up on stage and perform with the music. I don't even really feel like I'm 'in the band' [laughs], so it definitely happens afterward, but I set up the music from the get-go and produce it in a way that's evocative of the emotion I want the song to have, and then I write the lyrics from there.”

She Strives to Emulate a Pimp’s Lifestyle

“My friend told me a really good mantra that I'm trying to make [mine], and that's ‘A true pimp never trips,’” she says with a laugh. “I feel like it's applicable to all things in life. It's really easy to get worked up and stressed out — I’m very stressed out all the time, and I don't enjoy many things — so I'm very much trying to be more of a true pimp and not trip.”

She Recognizes Her Flaws and Utilizes Them to Thrive

“I'm just a stress case,” Tamaryn admits. “I'm neurotic and a control freak and have a very hard time living in the moment. I've definitely always been in my head. I have friends who go to therapy, and I've been auditing their [sessions] and they've been telling me tricks, like cognitive behavioral therapy, but I don't [actually] go. I mostly just have a very survivalist mentality about life — I just try to get through the day and not offend too many people and try potentially to play good shows and write good songs and make good imagery, and after that, it's just trying to stay alive. I think it's just like, a last-man-standing situation: if you just keep going, eventually you end up somewhere.” 

Her Worldliness Has No Influence on Her Music

“I was born in New Zealand, but I lived a lot of my life in Washington state, [and beyond],” she says. “I moved a lot; I was raised by gypsy, hippie people. If it does [influence], I couldn't tell you how — I think it's more because I'm such a cerebral person who's caught in my own mind, and with the internet and the way you communicate with people around the world now, I don't really feel geographically influenced — I feel very influenced by my own inner realm, and that's a very nonlinear, non-geographical place.”

She Finds an Equilibrium Between Work and Play

Tamaryn’s cure for creative stagnancy? “Chill really hard — you ebb and flow between working really hard and chilling really hard. Sometimes you have these moments where you make an album, and sometimes you have years where you just play shows and get a boyfriend or do things that inspire you to make an album later when they all fall apart,” she says with a laugh.

“Music is a beautiful thing — it’s a very great experience, and it's been an honor to be able to get involved in it the way that I have been, but it's not everything in life. I stress myself out about most things, but I try not to stress myself out about whether I should be creating things, because I never feel like I have a lack of ideas; I just have a lack of resources and the right collaborators at the right moment. Those things have to come together. Labels and money and bandmates and all those things are the tricky things, but ideas —there’s an unlimited tap/source that I always have access to, and I'm always inspired in that way, but it's all the logistics that are difficult. You kind of just have to be patient.”

Her Live Band Can Change at the Drop of a Hat

“The first two records, I had Rex [Shelverton], who was my main collaborator and producer, and he always played in the live band, but this last record, I decided to change the sound,” Tamaryn explains.

“It was something that wasn't very interesting to him, so we parted ways very amicably — we’re still good friends, and he's very supportive — and then I started making music with two other guys; one of them played in the band for the first couple of months, and then I started changing the lineup depending on who could do what. We're not at a level where we're making millions of dollars, so you kind of have to be fluid about it and know from tour to tour who can do it. It's very difficult, though, because the music I make is not easy to play, and it's complex in the nature of the pedals and the sounds and the amps, and you have to be able to understand the stylistic, sonic nature of the record. So, it's been very challenging, but it's really rewarding when it all comes together.”

Music is Religion

“I consider making music/being a creative person in general a spiritual place — it’s a sacred place — so the number one reason I do it is to have some sort of connection to spirit,” she says. “It's like a religion to me, and no matter what — if I have a million friends at any moment or I have no friends or I have a great love or I'm completely alone — I always return to music as my grounding, center space. It's taught me a lot about life in that way because it really is like, the central force of how I view reality and live my own life, and that branches out in a lot of ways, but the essence of it would be that it's the closest thing I have as a connection to spirit.”

She’s Tight with Bret Easton Ellis

“I'm scoring a TV series directed and written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) called The Deleted, and I got a part in a movie. I'm living in LA, and I'm just going with the flow.”