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TARA SIMMONS
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TARA SIMMONS
Genre: Indie, Pop
Region: Brisbane, QLD
Members: For live performance. Tara Simmons - Voice, Keys, Cello, Laptop Chris O'Neill - Drums Briony Luttrell - Cello Sophie Adamus - Cello Robert Davidson - Double Bass
Influences: Anja Garbarek, Juana Molina, The Notwists
Artist Website: www.tarasimmons.com

Tara Simmons grew up on a five acre hobby farm on the flats at the foot of the Blue Mountains, her world bordered by a tapestry woven from captivating, haunting, simple sounds. In her mind, she’s never left.

Little Tara was a solitary lass, but always looking for ways to channel her talent. When she was four, she parroted her brother playing violin to the point where she was sent to lessons of her own. At the age of nine, she nagged her cello-playing mother to be let loose on that instrument as well. And by the time she started high school, she’d had eight different piano teachers – seven of whom were ill-equipped to deal with her short attention span, her intolerance for ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ and other basic piano pieces, and her roaming mind. All the while, she honed her delicate voice in the Australian Youth Choir’s chamber ensemble.
Every afternoon of her young life, she was taxied to a different lesson determined to follow in the footsteps of those who influenced her.

Throughout her teens, Simmons fiddled after hours with illegal cracks of Logic and Cubase on her home computer, experimenting with electronic beats and found sounds, and blending them with the instruments she’d known all her life. And all the while, she was writing - letting spikes of emotion carry her away to a different realm, from which she always returned with a song. Her questing nature eventually led her to leave home to further her studies of music production.

In 2005, now based in Brisbane, she unleashed her compositions on an unready public from behind a giant hard-drive and screen at a venue in the River City’s Fortitude Valley. So fraught was that performance that she didn’t take the stage again for another year, instead choosing to continually tweak her seven-track debut EP Pendulum. Convinced it wasn’t quite ready to leave the nest, Simmons all but shelved it.

It was perhaps Triple J’s Caroline Tran who helped coax Simmons from her self-imposed musical hermitude by spinning lead single ‘Everybody Loves You’ on air. The song was a finalist at the Q Song Awards in 2006 and was selected as a feature song for Triple J OzMusic Month, convincing Simmons it was indeed ready for launch in August 2006. She knew that like all forms of art, you can’t ever finish writing a song – merely abandon it.

Simmons’ music was reborn - with her flatmate, fellow cellist and co-producer Briony Luttrell as the midwife. The musician always struggled with the way her music should be performed – her classical training taught her that backing tracks were the work of the devil, but she’s never exactly been one to conform. Instead, her perseverance with the laptop has won her a unique style and a unique band. During the recording of her second EP, Simmons began to form a band she was comfortable with – two cellos, drums, double bass, and Simmons herself on vocals, a Korg (because “a piano’s way too daggy”), laptop and a third cello. By the time the four-track All The Amendments came out in 2007 she had supported My Latest Novel and Home Video in Brisbane, and her sound was evolving towards the abstract indie-pop with strings that it is today.

In late 2007, Simmons combined her EPs into an eleven-track compilation (EPilation). Her songs have also been featured on the big screen as part of the soundtrack to Indie film All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane. Last year has seen her performing solo, with band and alongside Brisbane troupe Topology, equally at home on the edgy stage of the Brisbane Powerhouse, the bustle of Queen Street Mall and the chilled-out atmosphere of the Woodford Folk Festival.

A year in the making, 2009 sees the release of her debut album Spilt Milk, co-produced with Briony Luttrell, in which Simmons continues to blaze her own trail. She’s made her name with beat-driven, sample-rich numbers, but on Spilt Milk she boldly ventures into solo territory on ballad ‘Meet In The Middle’ and experimental closing track ‘The Worst Of It’, a symphony of layered vocal samples. Simmons’ versatility shows through on tracks like the chameleonic ‘Everything But The Kitchen Sink’, where a stately ballad suddenly explodes with sound, and the jaunty, blippy, bloppy and sublimely poppy ‘When You Say That I Don’t Care About You’.

Despite her avant-garde leanings and brave sorties into the musical unknown, Tara Simmons’ sonic adventurings aren’t likely to end anytime soon.

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Played on triple j When You Say That I Don't Care About You
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Meet In the Middle
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Played on triple j The Recycling Bin Song
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reviews

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When You Say That I Don't Care About You
rating:  4/5
Delightfully playful with great production. I could hear this anywhere in the world, but here it is... made in Brissie! Really top stuff and the reas...
triplej



When You Say That I Don't Care About You
rating:  5/5
Hoorah - new music from tara Simmons. And what a great track! Fantastic production that showcases her warm vocals and pop sensibilities. It reminds m...
triplej



When You Say That I Don't Care About You
rating:  4/5
Fantastically written song; the arrangements are quite complex and intelligent. Above all else, Tara has such a wonderfully warm, beguiling voice. I ...
triplej



The Recycling Bin Song
rating:  4/5
A Brisbane talent worth keeping an eye on. She has a Clare Bowditch vibe, but also adds some nice electronic touches to her songs.
triplej


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This project is supported by the Australia Council, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body, through its Music Board Section.