Album Premiere: MERK - 'Safe In Sound'

COAT, archive fur, BIKINI by MOSCHINO, BOOTS by PRADA

When Taraneh was writing her first two albums, she was making music for people to listen to in their rooms. New Age Prayer, releasing on Kiss Me I'm Famous, is comprised of cross-genre references that Taraneh describes as an entirely new sound, that while ethereal and a little moody (perfect for listening to in a bedroom) is better in person. When the album drops, she, Scarlet Rae and Prints will grace the stage at Mercury Lounge so keep an eye out. ;)

The singles you've put out so far sound wildly different from your past projects. How would you describe this record?

Yeah for sure, it's super multi-genre exploring a lot of very new sounds for me in terms of genre and the way that things are presented. And it's really exciting because we've entered this era where genres are almost dead in a way. I don't know if it has to do with the way that we consume media, but that genres kind of blend in this interesting way that I've never really experienced before, at least in my lifetime, or as far as I know in the past. I feel like I'm seeing more artists who are more and more kind of liberated in terms of what they present in their music. And this record is very much that as well. I wanted to do grunge tracks. I wanted to do a tele-disco. I wanted to do industrial, lo-fi, whatever. It's a bit offbeat to have an album that is so all over the place, but there is this cohesive thread of the voice and the songwriting ultimately bringing everything together.

I've been hearing people say that — that genre is dying, but it feels like more and more people are just realizing that music is just sound, and so artists are more open to experiment to create sounds that evoke feeling rather than fitting into a specific genre.

Totally. And no shade to the artists that do stick to a genre, it's cool and valuable to find a niche but I feel like we've entered an era where it's gone steps beyond that, in which genre and subculture are just blending in such a new and interesting way. I feel like we're going to see more and more multi-genre projects.

Or maybe just no genre. Would you say that it's something you're doing intentionally or it just happens naturally?

Yeah, no genre, just something completely new. I'd say that's kind of my goal as an artist in a lot of ways. I don't think there's any point in doing something if you're not bringing anything new to the table, whether that be a new feeling that you invoke for an audience, or a sound. I'm not going to sit here and call myself a pioneer or anything, but I do think that the way that this record specifically crosses genres and almost circumvents them is something that is relatively new. Some people get it, some people don't at this point, but I don't know, I'm sure that will be something we see a lot more of.

How do you feel about some of the more energetic songs on the record, like "Artificial" with Evanora:Unlimited?

I feel like this record is the first time that I brought my singing voice above a certain place in terms of volume. My past work is very soft and intimate, which is the writing style that feels very comfortable to me. But with this one, I wanted to get louder and louder. There's something very powerful about singing soft songs, but there's obviously something equally as powerful about being able to yell and scream and so songs like "Artificial" are super exciting to me.

Which song was your favorite to make?

So everything is co-produced by me and my friend James Duncan. He did all of the drum programming, he did all of the synth patches, he had all the bass parts, and I did the guitar. The most fun I had writing was probably on "Superstar", just because for that song in particular, I wrote the bass line, and bass isn't really my instrument. I know how to play, obviously, but that day, James and I swapped instruments, so he did guitar, I did bass and that was a really fun experience, taking a different approach to songwriting.

When did you write "Superstar"?

"Superstar", we wrote, I think February of 2023. So a little over a year ago. The first song I wrote for the record was actually the title track, "New Age Prayer", but we recorded that one last. I wrote that in 2022 when I came back from the first tour I did in Europe with Evanora. I actually wrote it originally with Evanora and Ivy in mind as features for it, and they both wanted to hop on the track but the timing didn't end up working out. But it's super exciting to see everyone reflected in the features. So I played this show in January of 2023, and it was me, Evanora, Ivy Knight, and LUCY (Cooper B Handy), and that show honestly changed a lot for me. It was the first really big show I played where audience members were actually singing my songs.

Is that where the four of you met?

No, we didn't meet there, but that show almost represented an era for me. The features say a lot about what that specific event and coming together of sound really represented in my life and career.

This being your third full-fledged project, what made you choose the title New Age Prayer? Are you a religious or spiritual person?

I'm not religious, but I am spiritual, and honestly, the title just kind of came to me. I was having a really hard time thinking of a title for the album, but I wrote the album already knowing that I wanted this to be the album art, the one that we selected. It's an image that was on a poster in an apartment I moved into in Boston just hanging on the wall and it would never come off when I tried to take it down. The night before I moved to New York, the whole poster fell off the wall. I have it in my room now. So this was on my wall the entire time when I was writing this record.

Did you find out where the image is from?

I had no idea what the origin of the image was. The front of the poster says 'Death Community,' like some monastery having funeral processions, and the back says , "You will die here," which is very ominous, but I did a reverse image search, and it's from this publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was in circulation in the seventies, and it was the publication that inspired Steve Jobs to make Apple or something. It was his favorite publication. I knew that I wanted to use the image before I found all of that out, but I was like, Holy shit, that's so sick.

So I guess you're the next Steve Jobs? [Laughs]

Maybe? You heard it here, folks, I'm the next Steve Jobs. [Laughs] But back to the question. I'm definitely a very spiritual person. I was raised Muslim, and even though I don't follow any sort of institutitional religion, I am culturally Muslim so that's imagery that has presented itself again and again in my work. But one day, I was looking out that window [points] and I was like new age prayer, that's it, that's the title. Grant Lepping was the engineer, and Kris Esfandiari, King Woman is the executive producer on the record and we were all in a group chat where I sent the title, and everyone was like, What? No, that's not it. I was like, No this is it, trust me guys. It just resonated.

HAT and TOP by DENIZ BLUEMENSTEIN, GLASSES by CELINE, BOOTS, talent’s own

Do you pray? 

I do pray. For me, music is prayer in a lot of ways. I think music is magic and the words that we speak are prayers in and of themselves. 

Like the opening track, "Ask and Receive”.

Totally. Our words hold immense weight and meaning. When I'm writing songs, it's not even an intentional thought process for me. It's more like I'm channeling a message. Not to sound totally offbeat, but lots of times I'll write something and it won't make sense to me until years later I'll listen back and be like, Oh my God, that is what it means for sure. You know what I mean? And this is the first record where I don't have very dark, depressing imagery in my lyricism, and that was a very intentional move on my part, just because I've spoken with so many friends who also make music, and the consensus is that what we put into our songs does really come true in a way. So the imagery in this record is very intentionally calling in what I want to experience.

Our words are so powerful. Even our thoughts and dreams.

Yeah, for sure. dreams are also such an important part of how I navigate my life. I honestly determine who I work with based on my dreams. If I say I'm going to work with someone and I have a bad dream about it, I just don’t do it. And it happened three times when I was choosing who to work with on the release of this project. If something is not meant to be, I'll just have a nightmare the night before. I'm supposed to sign the contract the next day, get this message and wake up like, Sorry, I’m not interested anymore.

I believe that, it’s how you align with what’s actually meant for you. 

Totally and in my family lineage, we definitely have very intense and guiding, almost prophetic dreams. I was named based on a dream. My dad had a dream with the wife of Abraham which is why my middle name is Sara. It’s not common in Persian culture to have middle names. My dad wanted to name me Sarah but my mom was like, No, we're not going to name her daughter Sarah. They decided to make it the middle name. 

Remind me what your first name means.

My name is "Taraneh" in Farsi. It means "melody".

So "Prophet" came out in January and you've released two singles and music videos for each. Talk to me about that process a little bit. 

Yeah, "Prophet" came out in January. "My World" came out in February, and then "On Repeat" just dropped a few weeks ago. Prophet is also a song that I wrote later in the process of making this record. And it's just a very exciting, totally new sound for me personally. It's really fun to perform. It's very energetic in a way that a lot of my other songs haven't been, which is really exciting. I wanted to make music that people can dance to. That's another thing. When I was writing, like my last record, like A Fleeting Feeling, which I wrote before I ever played my first show, I wasn't writing with performance in mind. I was writing songs to listen to in your bedroom. That's what I was doing with it. But I started performing and I was like, I want songs that people can dance to.

Yeah, you can't play a downer in the middle of an amped up show unless people are expecting it. Everyone's going to think you're being weird.

For sure. I mean, if that's the show that you're signing up for, then definitely, but I feel like I always play with friends who make crazy, loud music that's really energetic. So I feel like it is kind of dope to be like, okay, you were just dancing to some crazy shit and now I'm going to play this really sad song. The music finds its audience for sure.

What do you feel threads the entire album together?

As multi-genre as the record is, each song has a sister track. That's kind of how I played it out in my mind. So "Prophet" and "Artificial" are like sister tracks to me. And then "Ask and Receive" and "Superstar", "Reckoning" and "Burn". That's definitely a thread that I wanted to continue throughout. Then "New Age Prayer" stands on its own as the title track. There's nothing that's really quite like that one.

Have you done that before?

No, never, but looking back, I'm really glad I did. Like "Ask and Receive" and "Superstar", James did the drum programming and it was just a long project file that continued so I was like, what if we wrote a second song with the same drums from the last track, but it's a completely different song?

Now that you mention it, I do see that, and love that intention behind the pairing. How would you compare this to your last two projects?

So I've put out two full albums; all of my albums are 13 songs, that will continue forever. But my last two records, the first one I wrote when I was 15, then I recorded it when I was 21. I did all the production, if you can even call it that. It was very lo-fi, and that was intentional. I was like, I just need to get these songs out. That was Grab Bag. And then A Fleeting Feeling was a little bit more advanced. James was my co-producer on that as well. And I had a full band for the recordings. But this is the first one that it’s really like, I'm doing this. The fact that I got to work with so many of my favorite musicians and my closest friends on this has been such a pleasure and privilege. 

How does it feel to be increasing your output in terms of rollout this time around? 

Like the videos, the photo shoots. That's new. That's all new. When I released A Fleeting Feeling, I was still working for USA Today as an investigative journalist. Wow. I never really thought of music as something that I would do. It was just something that I wanted to do and it gave me a lot of pleasure and joy to do, but I was never thinking like, oh, rollout video, press, whatever. And this is the first time that I'm doing that. It's fun. It's cool. It's definitely very different. There is power in not really trying to play the game. And not to say that I'm playing the game now, but I’m definitely being very intentional in what I’m doing.

I was speaking to someone the other day who — not in music, in fashion — that has been fairly influential but still considers themself "uninvolved” in the industry. They said that there's a danger in feeling too involved. Is this what you mean by 'the game'? 

That is interesting, well my biggest goal as an artist is to reach as many people as will resonate with my music as possible. That is the intention beyond the artistic intention of trying to generate an entirely new feeling in terms of how I'm presenting my music to the world. Playing the game is figuring out how to hack the algorithms or whatever. The single drops are never something that I thought I would do. And in the past I was very against that. I was like, I want to present an entire body of work that's super cohesive at one point, and who cares if no one listens to it? That's still kind of a principle that guides me. I do the work for the sake of the work, but this time... I want to be a musician. And I mean, I am a musician, but I want to really pursue that now at this point in my life.

Do you feel like you’ve gotten to a point where you can be selective?

I'm starting to get there. I'm really excited. I just got a booking agent which was a huge goal of mine. I’m working with these girls, Natasha and Andrea. Natasha's also Persian, which is really cool, and I'm just excited to have representation because it's just been me and my band who are all amazing. We’ve been doing all the bookings ourselves up until this point and I don't say yes to just anything. I say things to the things that really excite me, which is a huge privilege.

Does that feel like the next step, being able to say no? 

Yeah it does feel like the next step for sure. Although, that's always been a principle of mine. A tenant is never supposed to say yes to anything that doesn't resonate with them. I've always said, If it's not hell, yes, it's no. It definitely has to resonate deep within me for me to say yes to it. But it is so exciting to just get booked for bigger shows and see more people streaming my music this time. Last year, I had a thousand listeners on Spotify. 

I noticed that, your streams have gone up so much since last year. 

Yeah, it’s really exciting. Not that streams are getting me money or anything at this point, but it is just really cool to see people in like small towns across America listening to my music.

Does it show you how old your listeners are? 

Yeah, my listeners are mostly 16 to 30, which is so cool. I very much write music for my younger self, so when I see teenagers streaming my shit, it's so exciting. That's honestly my target audience. It's the kids.

That must be such a nice feeling, to know that somewhere you might be inspiring younger people exactly like you at that age. And it’s cool that this is your first time putting out singles before a full project, because those tend to become the most popular tracks on a record.

Yeah definitely, it means the world. And it's so funny because even on my last record, there are so many songs that I wrote that I love, and it's easy to forget them in the mass of a body of work. I feel like I'm very much someone who will consume an entire album. I'll listen to it from the first song to the last song, but that's not how a lot of people consume content. There's playlists. So this time around, and this goes beyond playing into the algorithm, it's fun to be able to show people which my favorites are, the ones I really want them to listen to.

I was surprised to not see Thoom or Comet as features on the record because I know you’re friends and have worked together before.

Thoom and Comet are two of my favorite artists. Comet and I actually did a song together, "Bunny" on her last EP which is really special. I feel like one of the treats of making music is definitely being able to collaborate with artists that you respect and that's something I want to continue doing so I’d love to see them on the next project.

You mentioned consulting an astrologist to align specific dates with your roll out. What was that like? 

Yeah, so my friend Tamaryn, who is this iconic shoegaze legend as well, did all of the astrological elections for the record, which is something I'd never done before. That was super special. I would tell her which week I wanted to release something and I’d tell her my intention with each single then she’d pick a date and time for when I should drop everything. I would absolutely love to continue doing that. I do believe in astrology. 

A lot of early Persian spirituality is based around astrology as well, so it's something that definitely resonates with me on a cultural level. Obviously, the work needs to speak for itself, but being able to go in and fine tune these specific things has been a real treat. And it makes sense, right? Putting out a record called New Age Prayer and then having all of this astrological work behind the rollout. If there are any musicians who believe in astrology and want to work with an astrologer, hit up Tamaryn for sure.

What do you hope the impact of this album will be? 

I hope it reaches all the people who need to hear it at the perfect time. This is my prayer to the world at this moment and in this era of my life and the intention here is about channeling power — personal power more than anything as I face the world. I hope everyone who sings along is able to access that power within themselves as well.