Lycia’s Tara Vanflower: this womb like liquid honey (CD)

A side-project from Tara of Lycia
If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, then Tara VanFlower is from Saturn, descended to earth on a falling star to sing for all the sad little boys and girls. As a child, her birthday once fell on Easter and she became madly infatuated with bunnies. An Ouija board told her she’d be in a band one day. For eleven years she traveled around the country to compete in baton twirling pageants. Tara used to try all kinds of scary occult stuff until she became a good girl. Now she sips chai tea latte, plays with stuffed animals and thinks that kissing is swank.

Writing Mike VanPortfleet of Lycia a simple fan letter resulted in Tara traveling from the farmlands of Ohio to the deserts of Arizona to meet Mike face-to-face. She ended up never leaving, becoming a member of Lycia and helping to shape a new direction for the band’s last three albums. Her first solo album, This Womb Like Liquid Honey, echoes the strangeness of Jarboe and Swans, the edginess of Daisy Chainsaw and the lovable charm of The Cure.

A million light years away from Tara’s ethereal pose in Lycia, This Womb Like Liquid Honey is a morphing of Beauty and Beast. Possessed, obsessed, crazed and carnal — schizoid, staccato sounds soothed by spell-binding, dream-like vocals. Songs of seduction, innocence lost, demons and evil’s allure — sung in a sugary-sweet voice, oozing to a deranged musical backdrop. Like warm honey enveloping you, tucking you inside a protective womb where nothing can hurt you — Tara Van Flower steals your heart but leaves your soul to wallow in her maniacal maze of dementia.