Hurricane Man is the beautifully chaotic and wonderfully angsty new single by London based alt-rock band TASH. The song demands your attention and refuses to let it go, sweeping you in and spitting you back out with punchy riffs and demanding vocals. It's hard-hitting, heavy and incredibly fun to listen to. I sat down with 1/2 of the feisty duo - lead singer and bassist Tara Noble - to find out more about this exciting, emerging talent.
TOTALIZER: I've seen Tash live a few times now and the energy that the band brings, and the energy that you specifically bring as the front person is so incredible. Have you always had a naturally strong stage presence or is it something that you've had to work on?
TARA: First of all, thank you so much! I'm so glad you like the shows. I've been performing since I was probably about 13, and I would say it's definitely taken me pretty much almost 10 years to get to where I am now. I used to be very stationary, quite shy, and I used to have really really bad stage fright. I had to take myself off an hour beforehand, I wouldn't speak to anyone, sometimes I would throw up. I down know why my parents still let me do it really! I think the year before covid and this year is when everything sort of come to life. When TASH started is when I felt really comfortable.
TOTALIZER: How does it feel when you perform on stage now?
TARA: I still get nervous, but it's like no other feeling I've ever had and I think that's why I love it so much. That feeling of sharing things with people in the audience is my favourite, so it just feels euphoric, amazing.
TOTALIZER: What is your favourite gig that TASH has played?
TARA: Favourite gig... I'm probably gonna say the Crawlers gig. Usually it would only be people that we knew at our gigs, but because this one sold out before any of our friends had a chance to get tickets my flatmate was the only person I knew in the audience, so to get get such a good reception from people that didn't owe me anything and weren't connected to me was absolutely ridiculous. To be part of such an amazing lineup with really lovely people - Crawlers, Charles & The Big Boys - that for me sparks that feeling of "oh my god, so this can actually be a very inclusive experience." I'm usually the only woman on the lineup and often it's a little bit intimidating and a lot of the bands seem to almost feel like it's a completion, but when we did the Crawlers show it was just so welcoming. Everyone was so happy and getting into it. Hands down favourite gig so far.
Photo by Joe Curtis
TOTALIZER: What is the writing process like for you and your bandmate Robbie Paice?
TARA: It's quite simple really, Robbie is an absolute whiz at churning out the music. I down know how he does it. Everyday he's like "listen to this new idea", "listen to this" and I can't keep up! So he pretty much starts the riff ideas but it varies, sometimes he'll literally come to me with an almost finished song, he's so good like that, and then we go in the studio and we work out some vocals. My favourite way to do it is when he has a half idea and then we go in the studio and play around with the arrangement. He does all the production, so I say to him "oh! can we make it sound like this?" and then I'll make a weird noise with my mouth and he'll know what I'm thinking about. Then I just do all the vocals and lyrics on top of that and then we just put it all together.
TOTALIZER: Your new single Hurricane Man has just been released, can you give some insight into what the song is about?
TARA: Immediately when I heard this riff that Robbie wrote, it was just chaos really. When I was humming along the word 'hurricane' really stood out to me. As we developed the song, it sort of shaped itself around a whirlwind romance theme; something that's quite dangerous and scary. Like a hurricane, it sweeps you up, you get caught up and then you get thrown out the other end. I just wanted to portray that chaotic energy with this chaotic relationship. The song could be applied to friendships as well. When I write things I don't necessarily want them just to mean one thing. I like it when people can take their own interpretation from what I've written.
TOTALIZER: What was the recording process like?
TARA: We were actually approached by this guy called Al Groves who works at The Motor Museum Studio in Liverpool and he was really interested. in our stuff which was really cool. We came to the conclusion that if we could send him a track and then he could mix it for us to get that fuller sound that we were after. He's recorded one of the Bring Me The Horizon albums so we were like, if he can create such a huge sound for Bring Me The Horizon, that's something we're very much after. Robbie is amazing, he does everything, but we wanted to reach that extra 10%, especially with this song because it's so big. We got that final mix back a few months ago and I've just been trying to pull it all together for the release, and here we are!
TOTALIZER: As I mentioned before, I've seen you guys live a few times so I know that you have a great, full set of tunes. How do you choose which song will be the next single and why did you pick Hurricane Man for this release?
TARA: I love our last 4 releases, I really do, but I think we're evolving and I wanted these next 6 months to be when we're really gonna put the pressure on and hopefully do some amazing things. We chose Hurricane Man to be the first one of this new era because it was so chaotic and it kinda punches you in the face. I wanted to come in and be like "okay, we are here, we are ready to do this."
TOTALIZER: You posted on your personal Instagram, that you were stepping away from making solo pop music to focus on TASH, what brought you to make that decision?
TARA: You know what, it was a really tough decision because I really got into the solo stuff, especially over the lockdown since it gave me a project to focus on, but after having conversations with people and knowing that I really wanted to get somewhere with the music, the general feeling was that I needed to pick one avenue to focus on, which was really scary because I love both. Ultimately, it was the Crawlers gig that helped me decide because our band was a bit further on from my solo stuff, and I've been playing rock music since I was 13 and I was thinking "you know what, the rock music is what I want to do at heart."
'Hurricane Man' Cover Art by @ellyrodbert / @messy.illustration
TOTALIZER: What can we expect from TASH in 2022?
TARA: Well we've got a couple of things which we aren't allowed to announce yet which I'm very very excited about. I think our strength is our live shows, so for me I'm definitely gonna focus on making those shows the best that they can be. Everything in the world at the moment is so online. Over the lockdown I got so fed up of just listening to Spotify, I just wanted to listen to some real live music and this year we really want to harness that. We've got the Hurricane Man release party on the 1st February and we're putting that event on ourselves, so we've got no promoter or anything because I wanted it to almost take inspiration from the Crawlers show. I wanted it to be very friendly, very fair. I wanted to pay my support acts actually enough; we've got Charlie Raphael-Campbell and Finnian James. I think I just wanted to harness that energy of everyone being really lovely. There's no competition. Everyone is welcome. That's what I'm really inspired by. Like Crawlers, they have such an amazing relationship with their fans and that's actually really inspired me. I think for so long I was trying to be like "how can I be cool? how can I just play it cool?" and it's taken me a few moths to relax into it, but I think there's so many people out there like me who maybe are a little bit scared to be themselves, so I think with TASH this year I'm just gonna be myself. I think we're just gonna take the word by storm.
