"you and I could never be wrong / white face / brown eyes..."
The title track off of L.A. based musician / band Tunnel's EP "Vanilla" (via House Of Joy) is a mish mash of musical sounds / genres that in the end feel like it's own divergent indie rocker. From the onset we hear the sort of jagged wonky proto punk guitar lines that feel as sideways as some of Devo's electronic punk lines as front person / songwriter / singer / multi-instrumentalist Natasha Janfaza vocal aesthetic cries out bedroom punk meets 90's post grunge jangle pop. Then things get dreamily heavy with stacked guitar sounds, gloriously punk pop as if Liz Phair, Sonic Youth and Weezer had a baby, one whose first words were, "fuck that!" but in an adorable way.
"Vanilla" the EP, (hell, it is 8 songs so I would refer to it as an album) goes down easy. There is a brilliant pop sense within the jangle pop / punk sounds and Natasha has a wonderful way with words as well as not over producing. The songs feel like they would translate amazingly to live performances and I love that. While this is not an album review, I have to say that "Vanilla" is a collection of songs that individually expand, shape shift into more (become deeper) as they move along. That is more rare than you think. My favorite tracks are the sort of 90's post punkian / bedroom punk / art punk-esque "Dial Tone" with it's incredible narrative, the psychedelic heavy hazy grunge baby "Heartfaced Scarshape", the shoegaze pummeling of "Monday", the so cal surf punkish Friday night sound of "It's So Over" (love this), the aforementioned "Vanilla" and the bohemian psych punk dissonance of "Peeling Crown".
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/tunneltheband
https://tunnelll.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.instagram.com/tun._.nel/
Natasha Janfaza and her band are big on the idea of not giving a shit. Don’t roll your eyes so quickly: this doesn’t mean they’re into spray-painting the anarchy symbol on their bedroom doors or flicking off the camera at a press shoot for the sake of being shocking - they’re more dauntless, more daring, more unafraid of doing or saying something that might make them look a little corny. That too-muchness is a terrifying thing, but it’s at the core of Janfaza’s spirit, and it’s bled all the way out onto her band Tunnel’s EP, Vanilla, too.
See, Janfaza’s cues are normal enough in the indie world: she’s got a lot of My Bloody Valentine’s ethereality, Liz Phair’s snarl, even a smear of Juliana Hatfield’s whiplash and Bilinda Butcher’s dreamstates – but the ambitions she yanks out of them aren’t. Her references exist because she cares for the way that these lodestars reframed what it meant to feel naked inside a pop’s framework. She loves the way that the singer-songwriter moved into new, moody territory in the ‘90s - care of everyone above and their inimitable godhead, Alanis Morissette - but even too how the writers of that era (see: Mary Gaitskill) liked to collapse narratives of sex, obsession, and numbness into strange little stories that felt heavy with stark emotional exhibitionism.
But being an emotional exhibitionist means that Janfaza’s many-sided. Even million-sided. Her experiences sometimes feel like multiple people because she is multiple people - we all are - but there’s a drive inside it that wants it to stay that way - to stay ragged and intimate and cringey, because that’s what’s true. Her work’s queer in its variety and possibility, in how much energy it expends in being flexible and contending with conflicting ideas. This is what makes the chaos of living meaningful.
All of this emotional wayfaring comes from the fact that Janfaza’s so disciplined by trade. She’s a classically-trained violinist - sharpening her blade at Georgetown University - but shifted neatly into the Washington, D.C. punk scene with her three-piece bands and noise show acts - spaces where she really polished her pedigree. (D.C.’s inside her through and through - there’s hardcore in her blood, and on the album: Fugazi’s Brendan Canty is on the drums.) So her forensic detail to attention, her yen for unusually cinematic lyrics, her addiction to giving all of her facets their due instead of robbing herself of any emotion - it’s the runoff of a mind that’s working through loosening its grip on impositions and plunging headlong into more unafraid-to-go-there modes.
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
The title track off of L.A. based musician / band Tunnel's EP "Vanilla" (via House Of Joy) is a mish mash of musical sounds / genres that in the end feel like it's own divergent indie rocker. From the onset we hear the sort of jagged wonky proto punk guitar lines that feel as sideways as some of Devo's electronic punk lines as front person / songwriter / singer / multi-instrumentalist Natasha Janfaza vocal aesthetic cries out bedroom punk meets 90's post grunge jangle pop. Then things get dreamily heavy with stacked guitar sounds, gloriously punk pop as if Liz Phair, Sonic Youth and Weezer had a baby, one whose first words were, "fuck that!" but in an adorable way.
"Vanilla" the EP, (hell, it is 8 songs so I would refer to it as an album) goes down easy. There is a brilliant pop sense within the jangle pop / punk sounds and Natasha has a wonderful way with words as well as not over producing. The songs feel like they would translate amazingly to live performances and I love that. While this is not an album review, I have to say that "Vanilla" is a collection of songs that individually expand, shape shift into more (become deeper) as they move along. That is more rare than you think. My favorite tracks are the sort of 90's post punkian / bedroom punk / art punk-esque "Dial Tone" with it's incredible narrative, the psychedelic heavy hazy grunge baby "Heartfaced Scarshape", the shoegaze pummeling of "Monday", the so cal surf punkish Friday night sound of "It's So Over" (love this), the aforementioned "Vanilla" and the bohemian psych punk dissonance of "Peeling Crown".
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/tunneltheband
https://tunnelll.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.instagram.com/tun._.nel/
Natasha Janfaza and her band are big on the idea of not giving a shit. Don’t roll your eyes so quickly: this doesn’t mean they’re into spray-painting the anarchy symbol on their bedroom doors or flicking off the camera at a press shoot for the sake of being shocking - they’re more dauntless, more daring, more unafraid of doing or saying something that might make them look a little corny. That too-muchness is a terrifying thing, but it’s at the core of Janfaza’s spirit, and it’s bled all the way out onto her band Tunnel’s EP, Vanilla, too.
See, Janfaza’s cues are normal enough in the indie world: she’s got a lot of My Bloody Valentine’s ethereality, Liz Phair’s snarl, even a smear of Juliana Hatfield’s whiplash and Bilinda Butcher’s dreamstates – but the ambitions she yanks out of them aren’t. Her references exist because she cares for the way that these lodestars reframed what it meant to feel naked inside a pop’s framework. She loves the way that the singer-songwriter moved into new, moody territory in the ‘90s - care of everyone above and their inimitable godhead, Alanis Morissette - but even too how the writers of that era (see: Mary Gaitskill) liked to collapse narratives of sex, obsession, and numbness into strange little stories that felt heavy with stark emotional exhibitionism.
But being an emotional exhibitionist means that Janfaza’s many-sided. Even million-sided. Her experiences sometimes feel like multiple people because she is multiple people - we all are - but there’s a drive inside it that wants it to stay that way - to stay ragged and intimate and cringey, because that’s what’s true. Her work’s queer in its variety and possibility, in how much energy it expends in being flexible and contending with conflicting ideas. This is what makes the chaos of living meaningful.
All of this emotional wayfaring comes from the fact that Janfaza’s so disciplined by trade. She’s a classically-trained violinist - sharpening her blade at Georgetown University - but shifted neatly into the Washington, D.C. punk scene with her three-piece bands and noise show acts - spaces where she really polished her pedigree. (D.C.’s inside her through and through - there’s hardcore in her blood, and on the album: Fugazi’s Brendan Canty is on the drums.) So her forensic detail to attention, her yen for unusually cinematic lyrics, her addiction to giving all of her facets their due instead of robbing herself of any emotion - it’s the runoff of a mind that’s working through loosening its grip on impositions and plunging headlong into more unafraid-to-go-there modes.
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
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