VIDEO PREMIERE | Tamar Berk, "Socrates & Me"
Announcing the long awaited album debut from Tamar Berk; press photo courtesy of the artist.
With a creative career spanning from Cleveland, Chicago, Portland and so forth; underground rock vanguard Tamar Berk readies her debut album with a world premiere viewing of the visual for "Socrates & Me", directed by the artist with Erica Peña and Tuesday Denekas. Titled The Restless Dreams of Youth; Tamar delivers poignant portraits of personal anecdotes, angst, annoyances, shifts, discoveries and desires into a cycle of electric tales and sonic socratic pop meditations and soliloquys. Enlisting the talents of Matt Walker, Sean O'Keefe and Matt Thompson; Restless Dreams collects the impactful scenes and moments from awakened life and shapes them into sharp hooks that leap from bedroom recorded demos into fully realized productions.
Filmed at beautiful Balboa Park in San Diego; Tamar Berk brings her acoustic guitar to the sanctuary’s opulent amphitheater, regal hallways, fancy fountains and lush gardens. Berk's lyrics coolly careen like stream of consciousness quip takes taken from collected thoughts that rumble, rock and tumble with each chord strum. "Socrates" graces the park with tales of departures, the succession lines of life's stages and the modern mythologies that recount the dusty highways traversed in the rhythmic poetics of a journey journal travelogue. The So Cal park provides the perfect setting for the heartfelt hymn "Socrates & Me", where Berk's entertaining thought trails are relayed in a tranquil paradise of timeless majesty. Tamar Berk craftily blends the power chord buzz reminiscent of alternative rock bands heard & seen on MTV's 120 Minutes with a fresh, new and succinct take on the trajectories of tabulating the nuances of tribulation and change. Tamar delivers a pensive sense of thoughtful longings with the urgency of a road tripping engine en route to new destinations, recounting old habits and in pursuit of new routines and radical realizations.
Video still captured from “Socrates & Me”.
Tamar Berk provided us with the following reflections on the new album and some introductory thoughts on both the single and visual for “Socrates & Me”:
“Socrates & Me” is the third single off of my album The Restless Dreams of Youth. The song was written during a time of great upheaval in my life. Everything I had known was about to change and I just felt like I had lost my sense of self. In this video, I wanted to convey my sense of yearning to feel grounded and secure. I chose Balboa Park in San Diego because it’s this incredible oasis in the middle of San Diego and it’s filled with monumental old buildings, ornate architecture, statues, art museums, pavilions and gardens.
Everything feels solid, grounded and larger than life and the history that surrounds you definitely makes you realize that change is just a part your life and your history. “Socrates & Me” is the third song on my album which is a collection of new and old songs that weave together into a diary of where I’ve been and where I am. It doesn’t answer really answer the question of where I’m going…and I suppose that’s something I’ll figure out.
The Restless Dreams of Youth will be available February 26.
Cover art for Tamar Berk’s The Restless Dreams of Youth.