L.A.’s Tashaki Miyaki share album title track ‘Castaway’

Tashaki Miyaki press photo
Photo credit: Marc Gabor

Los Angeles’ trio Tashaki Miyaki have shared their second song + video for their title track Castaway. The track is lifted off their sophomore album which will be out April 23rd via Metropolis Records.

Singer/Drummer/Producer of Castaway Paige Stark shot the Sophia Coppola-inspired video on film, and said: “For the video I wanted to tap into all the feelings that can come up in love relationships: anger, sadness, loneliness, vulnerability, stillness, joy, romance, longing. Cami, my actress, has a beautifully expressive face and I’ve known her for a long time. I knew we would be able to create those moments together. I wanted it to feel like the camera was her lover, capturing her in various private moments, moods and feelings.” She adds of the song: “Castaway is about the challenges of romantic love and how we are all bad at it in one way or another. The idea of a castaway in all this is that no one understands the relationship except the people in it, so you really are stuck on an island alone together there, and maybe you make it back to the mainland, and maybe you stay on the island.” Watch the video clip via YouTube below.

Tashaki Miyaki are explorers of dreamy, hazy, melodic guitar pop. Though its three members are self-described “California kids,” their sound is influenced by much more than a west coast attitude. They all have broad musical tastes spanning across the American Songbook, Sun Records, Doo-Whoop and vocal groups from the 40s-50s, “the 60’s & 70’s things everyone loves”, their hero “Uncle Neil”, Punk, “Everything in the 90’s” and past and current hip-hop. Their sophomore LP, ‘Castaway,’ will be released by Metropolis in April 2021, expanding their musical palette and broadening the emotional territory with songs circling themes of love, memory and time which are haunting, catchy, soothing and arresting all at once.

More about ‘Castaway’

In their typical unhurried fashion, Tashaki Miyaki spent the past couple years writing and recording their sophomore LP, ‘Castaway,’ also produced by Stark. Musically, the band pushed themselves into new spaces. They did a deep dive into classic film scores and the music that originally inspired them to create as kids- ranging from Portishead to the Byrds, Snoop Dogg to Brian Eno, Prince to Bryan Ferry. They tried to deconstruct their own bands’ sound and reboot from that place, while letting some beloved influences echo throughout. “We decided no wah pedal for most of the record,” Stark explains. “We tried to incorporate new soundscapes. Like, what if there isn’t as much reverb on everything? What would be the less obvious sonic choice here? What if everything isn’t as fuzzy and smeary? What sounds have we not tried? What if we let stuff be a little naked? What does that sound like?” Stark also pushed her boundaries lyrically, going deeper and more personal. “The title of the record comes from this thing a friend would say. He said called himself a ‘castaway from decent society’. I feel like a castaway from everything a lot of the time. When I wrote the title track, I was thinking about love and how it changes over time if you stay in something long enough. It gets hard. And sometimes you feel stuck, and that’s kind of the mood of the record. Being stuck with yourself or with your partner or with your habits or thoughts. Being stuck in your reality, in your life. It’s a pretty melancholy record, I guess. I always try to be direct, but I didn’t have as much life lived on the first record. I saw things very black and white, and perhaps simpler. Now I see a lot more grey and a lot more complexity. And I think this record goes into that grey area.”

Tashaki Miyaki Castaway cover artwork

You can preorder the album here

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