Caress, the LA Based solo project of Tara Jane is heavily inspired by 1980’s dark wave and modern synth pop. She is best described as a blend of “haunting ethereal vocals that slither around hypnotic beats, pulsating basslines, trancey glassy synth loops, and evocative sparkling guitar melodies, exuding an eerie yet mesmerizing seductive flair impossible to resist.”
A recent addition to the Negative Gain roster, one-woman act Caress has been self-releasing darkwave tracks for a number of years leading up to proper debut Night Call. While relatively short, the LP finds LA’s Tara Jane moving through a relatively wide range of expressions of darkwave, moving from doomy guitar to club-focused beats and back again. While a couple of tracks cleave a bit too closely to the current Boy Harsher template (“Mortal Flaw”), those are the exception rather than the rule and for my money it’s when things take a dreamier and more melodic approach that Night Call is at its best. The restless coldwave drift of “Temporary Lover” has an unexpected amount of air and lift in its arrangement, and the cryptic nature of the refrain of “Dark Age”, “we don’t even know how she died,” is somehow made more eerie by virtue of the bright synthpop pulse of the track. The sweet tingle of the title track shows that Jane has a sense that material like this lives and dies by atmosphere and melody, and that she’s capable of both.