"It's a document of us at this time," says Strangeland-Menchaca, noting how their songs "solidified" after they spent time in the studio between shows and how gear changed throughout the course of the gigs represented on the album.
"Now, we've come to a point," he adds. "This whole record is about that progress."
From the moment Tearist played their first show, at an Echo Park bar called the Gold Room, where Kittles found herself competing for the attention of a crowd that came to watch a basketball game, they have been a continuously evolving unit. Words and phrases that Kittles sang at that first show flowered into full songs. YouTube clips of their live sets on L.A. college radio station KXLU and at a slew of small venues have served almost like radio singles for a band whose increasingly rabid following is congregating online. At a recent concert in France, Kittles was shocked that fans knew words to songs that have yet to be recorded in a studio.
"The comments we were getting were so strong, literally 'how I felt when I was listening to music' or something, like how it would affect me," says Kittles.
At the Echo, we had encountered fans who spoke so passionately about Tearist that it was hard to believe we were at a local venue watching a local opener to an international act. Tearist have that power and, right now, they are poised to become a cult sensation.
People have been noticing for a while that this band is special. "She's badass," wrote L.A. Weekly Music Editor Gustavo Turner about Kittles on the Weekly's West Coast Sound blog in November 2009. "She looks like the love child of 'Rehab'-era Amy Winehouse and Polly Jean Harvey (in a good way), digs good music (Throbbing Gristle, Can, the Red Crayola, the Ronettes), has absolutely zero shame onstage, and there's something in her intensity that reminds us of the young, hungry-for-the-world, prefame Madonna."
"I feel really successful," Kittles says. "Even at that first show, people would say how it made them feel, that it was giving them goose bumps. They went home and wrote or something."
She continues, "That's it. Why else are we here other than to make you feel or make you want to feel or allow you to think that that's OK? You can do that. You should do that."
Tearist play a record-release gig for Living: 2009-Present (Thin Wrist Recordings) on Sat., April 30, 7 p.m., at Vacation Vinyl in Silver Lake.
The "MOST CRUCIAL ACT TO COME OUT OF LA" ?????? FAIL.... This bitch cannot sing and the music is for art fags and peeps who take themselves too seriously.... COME ON.....you might as well have called it "I want to fellate tearist in as many ways possible"........GTFO..
saw this band @vacation vinyl they were truely amazing and innovative and the lead singer was very sweet person. I was amazed at what I heard and didn't expect to buy the lp(I hate my turntable) but no cds. Found some earlier stuff online but they are amazing from what you see and hear live:
The fact that LA Weekly's music section "never" listens to publicists "at all. ever."
The rule of absolutes: Nothing is absolute, not even this statement.
And by making an inclusive statement about the music department in particular, you are implicating the other departments of LA Weekly as behaving irresponsibly? Please explain why you specifically indicated the *music* section doesn't listen to publicists.
Nah, you're reading implications that are not there. My apologies--I thought you were an actual journalist and was addressing you as such. Please disregard and continue with your trolling. Good luck.
Ad hominem attacks: the last resort of the desperate simpleton. Please get a job at an actual newspaper (as opposed to the advertising rag you work for) before you go around calling yourself a journalist.
really haiku? i'm a working music journalist /sometimes editor and like most folks in my shoes, have wound up on about a hundred different pr email lists. i can assure you that tearist have a very minimal pr presence. their publicity goes through an independent, low-profile, one-woman company. there's no machine behind this band and i have a feeling that has a bit to do with the weekly's decision to take a strong stance in backing them -- i.e. to champion the duo as some legitimate homegrown greatness. trust me, i've seen the weekly shoot down plenty of ideas that have the hype machine backing them. tearist is compelling and talented and vibrant, and there's no reason to tear down the article and the band over a misperception about what inspired the piece. also, i know firsthand that publicists have a lot of complaints about the way the la weekly music section is run. that should be a compliment in your eyes, no?
all of you are just sitting at home on the internet with your thumb up your ass complaining about everything,i know the members of tearist personally and have seen them work really hard these past few years and they diserve any and all of the attention they get.what are you doing???yep your still on the internet,get a life.
as a journalist, i'm ashamed that a fellow journalist has absolutely no idea how the music section at the LA Weekly works. ask around: publicists don't like us very much because we don't listen to them. at all. ever.
Is is fair to hereby assume that everything coming from the music department at LA Weekly consists of exaggerations and misused verbiage? Or are you stating that the subset of your department is popular amongst commercial propagandists? One of the two statements must be true in order to preserve any logical consistency in what you've asserted.
The fact that LA Weekly's music section "never" listens to publicists "at all. ever."
The rule of absolutes: Nothing is absolute, not even this statement.
And by making an inclusive statement about the music department in particular, you are implicating the other departments of LA Weekly as behaving irresponsibly? Please explain why you specifically indicated the *music* section doesn't listen to publicists.
Live Broadcast of Tearist from their record release party here: www.yowie.com/show/31k4-30 @ 7pm PST
