Sarabeth Tucek returns from a decade-long hiatus with a new abbreviated name – SBT – and a new album, Joan Of All.
I usually know within the first few bars whether I’m going to like an artist who is new to me. Sometimes not even that. It took mere seconds of this early-R.E.M. jangle to draw me in to an artist who goes by the cryptic abbreviation SBT.
I confess I was not that familiar with her until now, even under her full name of Sarabeth Tucek, perhaps because she had been inactive for a decade until the recent release of a track called The Gift: the first fruit of her return to the music scene
I love it. And I love this, the second song she’s put out from her forthcoming double-album Joan Of All, released on Friday. It’s called Amber Shade and, while she usually sings, it’s more of a spoken-word affair, over an insistent beat.
Like much of what I’ve heard, there are echoes of the Velvets (and R.E.M.) and her sensual voice reminds me of Patti Smith and Annette Peacock, without actually sounding like them.
I also like the cut of her jib, especially her response to being asked about this tune by deferring to a quote by Tennessee Williams: “When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”
Miami born and Manhattan raised, Tucek first appeared on the music scene in 2003 after moving from New Jersey, where she relocated in her teens, to LA.
She was working as an actor until she met Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and, with his encouragement, took up the guitar and began to write songs.
She first came to attention singing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on his (Smog) album Supper, followed by an appearance in the great music doc Dig!
Her solo career began when one of the songs she wrote and co-sang on the BJM’s 2005 EP We Are The Radio, called Seer, later became her own debut single in 2006 under the new title Something For You.
Things snowballed after rave reviews for her debut album that year – she supported Bob Dylan on tour and moved back to her hometown on the East Coast, recording songs for tribute albums to The Cure (Three Imaginary Boys) and Roky Erikson.
Next came a raw, uncompromising second album called Get Well Soon – an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief, following her father’s death – in 2011.
Then a decade-long hiaitus while Tucek focused on other creative endeavours before returning with The Gift, a first taste of the new double-album, and its equally great B-side, 13th St #2.