Tara Jane O’Neil is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and visual artist. She composes and performs under her own name and in collaboration with other musicians, artists, dancers, and filmmakers. As a solo artist she has released ten full-length albums..

O’Neil was a founding member of Rodan, the Sonora Pine and several other bands. She has collaborated on recordings and stages with Papa M, Steve Gunn, Hand Habits, Lower Dens, Michael Hurley, Little Wings, Marisa Anderson, Catherine Irwin, Mirah, Mount Eerie, and many others.

Since 1992 has performed at clubs, galleries, and DIY spaces around the world and venues such as the Centre de Pompdou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer and the Broad. She starred in the cult classic film Half-Cocked and scored feature films including His Lost Name, Great Speeches From a Dying World and others. Her visual art work has been shown in cities including London, Tokyo, LA, New York and Portland and has been published in three monographs.

https://www.tarajaneoneil.com

Storey Littleton’s debut solo album, “At a Diner”, is silkworm silk: a soft, luminous surface wrapped around surprising tensile strength—a cashmere sheath hiding a scalpel. Her sound is tender and light, even angelic at times, but there’s a steadiness beneath it that holds the songs in place. Quiet openings, subtle but unusual arrangements (including a recurring, liquid and smoky clarinet), and melodies that settle in without fanfare make the album feel warm and inviting, even as something sharper moves underneath.

Throughout “At a Diner”, Littleton's sly lyrics take small turns that open into bigger truths. A simple observation tilts when an unexpected word is added to the end of a phrase; a question becomes a challenge; a benign description twists to accuse, perhaps to threaten. These logical and emotional jump-scares pack a punch wrapped in a whisper. Storey can sing “I’m just a child” in one song and, in another, offer a line about “posing for you on a motel bed.” The two images coexist without explication, creating a quiet echo across the album. That restraint is a choice and key to the songs’ power…by refusing a clear motive or conclusion, she makes them evergreen, open to interpretation. Littleton leaves the pieces where they fall, trusting the listener to see into them.

Littleton grew up immersed in music, playing in her parents’ (Elizabeth Mitchell and Dan Littleton) family band since childhood. At a Diner gathers that early exposure into a sophisticated blend, adopting traditional musical forms and narrative frames only to upend them: in “January,” she mimics a talky teen-drama preamble à la “Leader of the Pack” but abandons the soft-focus mythologizing of the bad boy, shifting the lens back to the girls before stepping outside the scene altogether. She does something similar in “To Answer,” where the shape of a simple question transforms a sad-girl insecurity ballad into a wickedly clever censure. “At the Diner,” the album’s title track, is the earwormiest of earworms—I’d post a warning for those like me who are cursed by a contagious endless mental loop of music if the tune weren’t so delicious.

Ending with “Nothing to No One Again” is genius because it’s where she admits—almost analytically—that she knows she should be in her mindless-fuckup era, yet she reaches that feeling through thought:

“I didn’t give up
back when I should’ve known to
I want to fuck up
I know I’m supposed to.”

She’s both inside the chaos and just outside it, letting intellect lead her into feeling, letting care and carelessness entwine. She doesn’t frame it as revelation or lesson; she just sings it, steady and unguarded, the intellect and emotion braid together. And the song holds that tension the way silk does—a softness that distracts from, but never obscures, the strength woven underneath.

– Jenny Toomey

https://storeylittleton.com/

Tara Jane O'Neil / Storey Littleton

Tara Jane O'Neil / Storey Littleton