Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, and Dum Dum Records label head Taleen Kali (she/they) crafts romantic punk songs with a cosmic sound with elements of shoegaze, psychedelia and grunge that’s dreamy and defiant. Influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, Kali has manages to fuse her cultural linage with the sounds of the modern countercultures she grew up embracing and eventually exploring as a musician.
Kali initially starting her career in earnest as a member of Los Angeles-based band TÜLIPS. After TÜLIPS went out with a bang at their final headline show at The Regent Theater back in 2016, Kali stepped out into the limelight as a solo artist, sharing bills and touring the States with the likes of Ex Hex, Alice Bag and Seth Bogart.
The Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate’s solo debut, 2018’s Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios and was mixed by Machine’s Brad Laner. The EP, which found Kali’s riot grrl ethos maturing into a polished multifaceted punk sound with noise pop and New Wave, was released to praise from BUST Magazine and Stereogum, who likened her sound to a contemporary Blondie. Soul Songs was also included in Pitchfork‘s Guide to Summer Albums and LA Weekly‘s Best Indie Punk Albums.
Kali and her backing band followed up with an unplugged version of the EP and covers of The Supremes‘ “Baby Love” and Garbage‘s “#1 Crush.” She also recorded a two-song pandemic project called Changing with her TÜLIPS-era producer Greg Katz.
As I mentioned earlier, Kali is the founder of Los Angeles-based experimental label Dum Dum Records and what the The Los Angeles Times has called “cult favorite” DUM DUM Zine — and she’s a sound healer, who often leads group mediations. Interestingly, last year, she briefly pivoted from the punk psychedelia she’s best known for with the release of last year’s Songs For Meditation, a sound bath album. Additionally, her poetry, essays and visual art have appeared in digital and internationally recognized publications including The Onion, Spin Magazine, Razorcake, Los Angeleno, and The Bushwick Review.
Taleen Kali’s Jeff Schroeder and Josiah Mazzaschi-co-produced full-length debut Flower of Life is slated for a March 3, 2023 release through Kali’s Dum Dum Records. Sonically, the album sees the rising Los Angeles further cementing her fuzzy and noisy take on psych punk paired with vocals that run the range of femme punk and shoegaze siren.
Flower of Life’s latest single, album title track “Flower of Life” is a grungy psych punk ripper centered around Kali’s sneering delivery, fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming, soaring organ chords paired with a mosh pit friendly chorus. To my ears, “Flower of Life” sonically, is a defiant and decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like alt rock influenced song — think My Bloody Valentine meets riot grrr-era punk. So far, the track received praise from Buzzbands LA and Grimy Goods, and radio airplay from KEXP.
“‘Flower of Life’ was a spiritual concept I held onto for a long time before writing this song,” the Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate explains in press notes. “The flower is a fractal, a cycle, ever blooming, ever decaying.
“For our 1st music video, we wanted to honor this cycle by highlighting the cultural moments we experienced in the recent past as a way of celebrating our resilience while also looking ahead to the future. For our band right now, it means being able to perform again and tour to support our upcoming album. In the larger scheme of things, it means so much more.
It was important to us to not only highlight resistance but also celebration in the music video. The news clips in the video range from footage of LGBTQ pride marches to recent protests, which include the recent Roe vs. Wade demonstrations, Armenians in L.A. protesting the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Black Lives Matter, and even the 2017 Women’s March.”
