Search - Lucid Nation :: Tacoma Ballet

Tamra begins at her most confrontational, singing of claustrophobia, of ties that bind, of being stuck in something old, of having reached the end of something. But by the time we get to the opening song of "What's the question?" it seems that Tamra has decided the answer is to "try something new before we die." And so the last songs seem to be about the scary pleasures of getting out, of finding release. By the final track (significantly entitled "Shelter") I felt like I had just heard rock's first novel. But to describe these CDs in literary terms is to do a disservice to the fact that "Tacoma Ballet" is above all a genre-hopping journey through country blues, Ramonesesque punk, dark psychedelia, electronic sound collage, with a very strong nod to the Rolling Stones, including a loopy deconstruction of "Happy" off "Exile on Main Street," and, perhaps most of all, a blending of the aggressive, menacing bass sound of Peter Hook at the height of Joy Division and the band's general enthusiasm for all things Pere Ubu.