Americana Highways presents this premiere of Tamar Berk’s song “Better Off Meditating.” “Better Off Meditating” is from Berk’s forthcoming debut album The Restless Dreams of Youth. The album was mixed by Sean O’Keefe (Fallout Boy, Rachel Yamagata, Plain White T’s, Motion City Soundtrack) and recorded by Matt Thompson (Maita, The Hague) to help record. Matt Walker (Morrissey, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins) is on drums.
Enjoy the drivin’ pop edge to this breakout by Tamar Berk, as she gathers the forces of indie rock n roll all around her.
I’m a person that has a hard time expressing why I’m feeling upset or depressed. It’s just hard for me to open up, so when I do, I am hoping that someone really listens and maybe even says something magical to make me feel better about everything. But in any relationship, that doesn’t always happen. I wrote “Better off Meditating” after feeling really frustrated, like I was being taken for granted and just sort of blown off. And yes, it’s definitely sarcastic. I recorded Better off Meditating as a demo quite a while ago and though I kept a lot of the basic tracks, I called Matt Thomson (The Hague, Maita) and he helped me refresh and redo some of the tracks. I sent those over to my friend Matt Walker (Smashing Pumpkins, Morissey, Garbage) and he recorded his tracks remotely in his home studio in Chicago. They sounded amazing! I reached out to Chris Davies (Penetrators, The Shards) whom I was playing with prior to Covid, and asked him to play some lead guitar. Luckily, he had a home studio and he was already familiar with the songs so he is featured on this track too. Someone described the song as “a chunky Cars/Cure ‘80s new wave pop vibe” which I’m totally okay with. 🙂 — Tamar Berk
Follow her here: ffm.bio/tamarberkmusic