An album that artfully captures the difficult emotions so often needed to be processed before getting to a healing place.
Tara Beier sees it as something of a personal mission to help heal and inspire others. After growing up in a Canadian horse village, she went on to gain a degree in criminology, before the arts drew her back in, and she now weaves them into her work advocating for marginalised communities. She’s so focused on wellness, in fact, that recently she even released her own fragrance line, ‘Lovender’, that taps into the calming power of holistics. On her third album, “Mourning Doves of Joshua Tree”, the Canadian-American explores more than just wellness itself, but the emotions tied to getting to that place: grief and, in turn, renewal.
No matter what she’s singing about, Beier vocals give off effortless indie cool with an Americana twist, like a dialled-back Lucinda Williams. “My riding boots won’t fit no more / Pregnancy left my body sore / So sore, it felt like a war,” she complains in ‘Close the Door’, a deeply personal, ultimately hopeful song about her journey to parenthood via. IVF and how she’s said goodbye to the person and darkness she harboured before her children were born. The breezy ‘Rainbow’ looks at how you sometimes need to take a step back from people who no longer fit with the life you want to lead (“So, I send my love from faraway / Not gonna pretend that things would be OK”), something that doesn’t come without its own pain: “Mourning the loss / Of what we used to be.”
Musically straddling the line between Americana and alt-pop, ‘Lost Brother’ was inspired by Beier’s grandmother, who, as a young woman, lost her brother in the forest and, despite best efforts, couldn’t find him. His whereabouts remained a mystery for his sister’s whole life, so it’s a true gut punch when Beier finishes the song with, “Hello brother / I finally found you”, presenting the idea that the siblings might have met again in a life beyond this one. The light ‘Rocketdyne’ follows Beier as she makes the journey from the noise of her previous life to find peace in the Californian desert, while ‘Desert Soul’ imparts an important message about staying true to yourself as you move forward (“Don’t give up / Listen to your heart / Listen to your soul”).
‘Wild Rejoice’ celebrates the beauty of enduring love (“Through good and bad times / We drove through the fire / Thunder come down on us / We hold each other”) with an 80s pop flair, and ‘Shooting Star’ rebukes the idea of being held back from your dreams because you’re deemed “too old, too fat” or even “too thin” by detractors. ‘Mourning Doves’ is a beautiful take on the idea that the titular doves might give comfort to people who have lost loved ones, including a mother who lost her daughter to illness and a woman who needs comfort about losing her son to suicide when he was just 17.
While Beier may be more than just a musician, with her advocacy and fragrance line – not to mention motherhood – being some of the other things that take up her time, it’s a relief indeed that she still has time for music because with the power and insight she showcases on “Mourning Doves of Joshua Tree”, it just might be her biggest sanative asset of all.
