Tag: Purgatory

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Taleen Kali Shares Bruising “Crossed”

JOVM mainstay Taleen Kali (she/they) is a Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, Dum Dum Records founder and head and Dum Dum Fest founder. As a singer/songwriter and musician, Kali has made a career out of crafting Romantic punk songs that are routinely dreamy and defiant while featuring elements of shoegaze, psych rock and grunge.

The Los Angeles-based artist also has been influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, fusing her cultural heritage and identity with the sounds of the modern countercultures that Kali grew up embracing and eventually exploring as musician.

Kali’s career started in earnest with a stint in Los Angeles-based outfit TÜLIPS. After TÜLIPS split up, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstay stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist, eventually touring across the US with Ex Hex, Alice Bag and Seth Bogart. 

The JOVM mainstay’s 2018  Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios and found Kali’s long-held riot grrl ethos maturing into a polished, multifaceted punk-leaning sound with elements of noise pop and New Wave. The EP received 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. 

Their 2023 Jeff Schroeder and Josiah Mazzaschi-co-produced full-length debut Flower of Life saw the JOVM mainstay firmly cementing a fuzzy and noisy take on psych punk paired with vocals that ran the range of femme punk and shoegaze siren. The album’s first two singles “Flower of Life” and “Crusher” received airplay from KEXP and KCRW respectively. KCRW’s Henry Rollins — yes, that Henry Rollins — played the album on the station literally weekly after the album’s release. And the album’s material received heavy rotation over at KEXP.

Adding to a growing national profile, Kali was interviewed by Spin. Flowers of Life was named a Bandcamp Album of the Day. Kali also supported the album with two US tours that included sets at Freakout Fest, Psyched Fest, Treefort, SXSW and their own Dum Dum Fest.

Hot on the heels of their recent appearance at this year’s Purple City Fest in Edmonton, Kali and their backing band have just embarked on a North American tour. The tour includes an October 8, 2025 stop at Purgatory. And as always, the remaining tour dates are below.

But in the meantime, the JOVM mainstay shares their latest single “Crossed,” a bruising song anchored around thunderously propulsive drumming, swirling, shoegaze-meets-garage punk fuzz and enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with Kali’s seductive, commanding delivery. The song may arguably be among the hardest and grittiest songs that the JOVM mainstay has released to date, showcasing a darker sonic direction drawing from the likes of The Horrors, Ringo Deathstarr, Sextile, L.A. Witch, Tamaryn, Curve, Chapterhouse and others.

“The opening lines of the song are ‘Rose is a rose’ which is from my favorite Gertrude Stein poem ‘Sacred Emily.’ It’s meant to convey ‘it is what it is,’ or ‘things are what they are.’ I wanted to write about how matter of fact things are in life when the only choice you have is to ride the waves of grief,” the JOVM mainstay explains. “I lost my grandmother in 2023, the year we released our debut album, and the song ‘Crossed’ is a personal exploration where I’m just trying to make sense of the loss. Missing my favorite person on earth and wishing I could find a way to commune with the dead. The artwork features an Ethiopian cross that my grandmother always used to wear from her hometown of Addis Ababa, which she passed onto me.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Stimmerman Shares Eerie “Mirror”

Eva Lawitts is a New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, grizzled local scene veteran and JOVM mainstay: Lawitts began her career with a 14-year run with local, prog rock shredders Sister Helen. Since Sister Helen’s break-up, she has developed a reputation as a go-to session and touring musician, working with Vagabon, Princess Nokia, and others.

Lawitts aslo co-runs Brooklyn-based recording studio, Wonderpark Studios, where she’s a producer and engineer. Adding to a busy schedule, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer played bass on Oceanator‘s Things I Never Said. 

Her recording project Stimmerman — which is simultaneously a band and a solo project — was founded back in 2017 after her previous band Sister Helen split up. “I wanted a project that was all mine and so I picked a family name long-changed for the purposes of assimilating into American Society (what a concept)- Stimmerman,” Lawitts explains in press notes. 

Lawitts’ Stimmerman debut, 2019’s Goofballs which featured “It Shows” and “Dentist vs. Pharmacist.” was ” . . . more or less about loss and survivor’s guilt: it’s a meditation on a friend’s fatal overdose at a young age through that lens.”

Lawitts’ latest album Undertaking is slated for a May 26, 2023 release through Worry Records. The album reportedly sees Lawitts further cementing her reputation for creating boundary pushing work inspired by an eclectic array of music that aims to hold a cathartic space for the listener/audience.

Undertaking‘s latest single “Mirror” is built around a brooding and eerie production featuring twinkling keys paired with sparse skittering beats, swirling guitar textures and Lawitts’ comforting and self-aware crooning. While “Mirror” sonically brings a sleek synthesis of Beacon and Sylvan Esso with a playful nod to lullabies, the song lyrically is an self-aware yet unvarnished and unafraid baring of the soul — and its deepest desires and thoughts.

The accompanying video for “Mirror” was animated and edited by Max McDaniel-Neff features footage of bodies of water with line drawings depicting the song’s lyrics superimposed over the water.