Tag: Single Review: Crushed

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.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Us and I Share Shimmering and Melancholy “Crushed”

Formed back in 2018 in  Bangalore and currently based in Düsseldorf, the emerging synth pop duo Us and I — Bidisha Kesh (vocals) and Guarav Govilkar (production) — features members who come from very different backgrounds and who bonded over having similar musical sensibilities: When the pair started to work together, they quickly realized that they shared a unique way of crafting songs with deeply personal lyrics paired with the melancholia of the orange and yellow colors leaking from their synthesizers.

The duo then spent the next two years developing and honing a sound they felt acted as a bridge between the synth-driven work of Chromatics and the slow-burning, dream pop of Beach House — with subtle nods to darkwave and post-punk. Thematically, the duo’s material generally draws from everyday life and the relationships around them. 

The duo’s debut EP, 2021’s Loveless thematically focused on a deeply universal subject, love — in particular, a past love, and how the nostalgia and grief of that past love can hit us like a wave hitting the shore. Since the release of Loveless EP, the duo relocated to Düsseldorf — for work and for potentially better opportunities for their music.

Their latest single, the bittersweet and hook-driven “Crushed” features Kesh’s achingly expressive delivery ethereally floating over shimmering synth arpeggios and stomping beats. Interestingly, “Crushed” strikes me as a subtle refinement of their sound that still sees them channeling Beach House and Still Corners — but with a decidedly 80s tinge.

“‘Crushed’ thrusts you in a crystal capsule where the lull of a bittersweet spell and the deluge of impeccable love caresses your every bone,” the Düsseldorf-based duo say. “And yet when the virulent pain of this beautiful guise emerges again, you seek to escape this perfect dream, lest you’re crushed to death.”