Formed in Bristol UK in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin.
With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic approaches, Clerkin & co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes – never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification – allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.

There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, dare I say indie rock. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song.

Ryan Davis (Chicago, February 2026)