Tamar Berk – Stay Close By

While preparing to launch “OCD,” her fifth full-length album in five years and the most personal and intense release yet, Tamar Berk decided to treat her listeners with “stay close by,” a fine piece of sonic artistry that vividly showcases what you might expect from the upcoming album. Arriving as the first standalone single in 2025, and a first piece single “Good Times For A Change,” a critically acclaimed full-length released last year, it’s one of those songs that will immediately wrap around your listening apparatus and refuse to let go long after the last notes and beats fade. By exploring themes such as anxiety, obsessions, fears, memories, and dreams, Tamar Berk offers a session of reflection, self-healing, and honesty, wrapped in a candy-coated yet abrasive sonic experience. For those stumbling upon her music for the first time, Tamar Berk is known for her deep explorations and experimentations of various aesthetics, approaches, techniques, and styles, all in order to deliver a luxuriant atmosphere that suits the lyrical content. She ultimately succeeds every time, offering a fascinating listening experience worth repeating over and over again, so that’s the case with “stay close by” as well. With all those fundamental elements borrowed from shoegaze, dream pop, indie pop, alt-pop, and many more, her music shines like anything you’ve heard before. There’s so uniqueness in her vocal and sonic delivery that you’ll gladly repeat this composition over and over again.

“stay close by” channels honest emotion through calm, soothing, ethereal instrumentations and moderate beats. There’s something about this composition that forces the listener to repeatedly return and spin it over again. From the onset, it becomes apparent that Tamar Berk poured heart and soul into this number. Her dedication to the craft is vividly hearable in a perfect song structure, which is adorned with many profoundly detailed segments, brilliant ideas, and outstanding orchestrations. Each vocal, sonic, and rhythmic maneuver has its place and purpose in this sonic equation, making the listening experience even more pleasant to the ears. Her otherworldly voice acts as a centerpiece of this composition, elevating everything to new heights, commanding attention, and guiding the listening apparatus from scratch to finish. Perhaps calm and steady yet high-pitched when necessary, these vocal harmonies seamlessly balance low, mid, and high notes provided by the orchestrations. Besides emphasizing everything she intended to achieve with this song and decorating all those cleverly assembled segments and instrumentations, her vocal performance contributes more than necessary emotional depth and complexity over an already intricate song structure. In the meantime, the guitars are crafting a perfect backdrop for all the vocals to shine upon. You’ll notice all those layers lurking around and shaping a luxuriant soundscape. The generous serving contributes rawness, abrasiveness, and grittiness that act as a counterpoint to the calm ambiance. You’ll hear how Tamar Berk gradually implements more and more layers in order to depict a lush sonic imagery built upon interplays between fuzzy riffs and chord progressions on one side and occasional themes, leads, melodies, and harmonies. Also, it’s nearly mindblowing how all these layers perfectly suit vocal performance, making “stay close by” even more enjoyable.

Beneath the guitars, there are equally impressive, warm-sounding, intricate basslines rumbling and offering warmth, clearness, and heaviness to the mix while simultaneously serving as a binding element between the mentioned instrumentations and rhythmic patterns. These low ends are rich, deep, dense, and heavy, contributing groove, depth, and detail to this incredible song. Of course, there are tastefully assembled, flawlessly performed, well-accentuated beats, breaks, fills, and other percussive acrobatics, keeping the remainder of the instrumentations in line while dictating groove and pace. “stay close by” is an exceptional composition that vividly showcases Tamar Berk’s tremendous experience, knowledge, creativity, talent, skills, ideas, and musicianship. She poured heart and soul into this fine piece of sonic artistry, resulting in a one-of-a-kind listening experience that will immediately appeal to the broader audience. “stay close by” is a shoegaze/dream pop masterpiece you should immediately place on your music radar. It’s available on all streaming platforms. Don’t miss it!