If you want to throw a music critic into a real mental tizzy, ask them what they're listening to or what they'd recommend. I know enough other critics that I can report most of our minds go blank at that query. When you’re listening to multiple albums a day on average, there’s just too much to sift through in those seconds to reliably offer up an immediate answer. To counter that, I usually find one or two albums a year to keep at the top of my mental rolodex that I think would be both a) broadly appealing and b) have the honest potential to break bigger if more ears were just exposed to it. In 2023, the album best fitting that bill was Tamar Berk's tiny injuries.
Berk's catalog is decades long, and deeply varied. In her early Chicago days she fronted the power hard-pop trio Starball before moving onto the more electroclash sounds of The Countdown, and then dipping into the prog-rock and psychedelic attack of Paradise after relocating West. And that’s not even her full CV, just the highlights. While all of those acts were impressive, it wasn't until Berk released her first fully solo album the restless dreams of youth that she really and truly locked into a sound that was fully and truly hers. And holy heck, is that a powerful sound. Since then she's released a trio of solo albums—uniformly excellent and marked by their mixture of youthful passion reigned in my more mature bouts of wisdom amidst sharply written and tightly arranged tunes. To my ears, Berk spent a solid two decades trying to find the sound that worked for her, and she found it once she fully trusted in her own inner voice, devoid of an ounce of worry whether the results were timely or commercial or, well, anything but 100% of what Berk wanted to do.
Since the Starball days, I've always known Berk had "it," but I'm super excited to see she also finally seems to believe that as well, understanding and embracing the personal power of her talent while being unafraid to explore it. And on tiny injuries she continues create songs that tickle the ears and invite you in with their sweetness, tempered by the darker introspection driving most of the lyrics. And lemme tell you, I have rarely felt so seen as I did when she sings "I used to know where to go / Where all the parties were and every show" and "Why won’t I let it go? / Fighting the undertow" near the tail end of the LP on the song "i was saved by the beauty in the world."
Today, Berk is releasing a new single and video from the album, "permanent vacation," above, directed by Brandon Mosquera and Berk. Give it a peek and a listen, then check out her album … and then, inevitably, you'll end up checking out her prior two albums, and so on and so on. Remember when I said tiny injuries was my 2023 recommendation when people would ask me that nebulous question "what are you listening to?" What I didn't tell you is that every person who got that answer contacted me later—sometimes hours, sometimes days, and sometimes weeks later—to tell me how much they loved the album and were playing it on repeat.
Now you'll be able to say that too!
Cover Photo by Brandon Mosquera