Birth name Thayer Sarrano Music group Of Montreal | Years active 2007–present | |
 | ||
Occupation(s) Musician, singer-songwriter Instruments Vocals, guitar, pedal steel, piano, organ, mellotron, keyboards Associated acts Dead Confederate, of Montreal, Kuroma, T. Hardy Morris, Glass Ashes, Hope For Agoldensummer Website www.thayersarrano.comthayersarrano.bandcamp.com Genres Shoegazing, Psychedelic folk, Southern rock Record labels Guildwater Group, Thayer Sarrano Albums Lift Your Eyes to the Hills, Hissing Fauna - Are You the D, Innocence Reaches, Satanic Panic in the Attic, Skeletal Lamping Similar Clayton Rychlik, Dottie Alexander, Davey Pierce, Derek Almstead, The Late BP Helium | ||
Thayer Sarrano is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist. Besides her solo work, she has collaborated with numerous bands as a touring member or session player, and is strongly affiliated with the music scene of Athens, Georgia. She has released two albums, both of which have received positive reviews, with her music being referred to as shoegaze, psychedelic folk and Southern Gothic.
Contents
Early life and career
Sarrano grew up in a small town in southern Georgia after having lived in a monastic seminary as a preschooler. She moved to Athens, GA, having enrolled at UGA as an art student. There, musically educated since the age of 3 and having shown an earlier interest in poetry, she took up songwriting and started collaborating with local musicians, which led to her releasing two solo albums, King (2009) and Lift Your Eyes to the Hills (2012), recording with several other acts (Discography) and touring with of Montreal, Kuroma and Dead Confederate. Sarrano is also a counselor at Camp Amped, a camp for teenage musicians held at Nuçi's Space, to which a portion of the sales of her second album is donated.
Musical style and reception
According to Sarrano, she was influenced by the music she was familiar with while growing up, church chanting being her first contact with music, along with gospel, folk and southern rock, with later influences like Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Neil Young. She also mentions Rilke and the connection between her songwriting and painting processes.
Reviewing King, Americana UK has called her "the new queen of shoegaze", noting the "spookiness" achieved with the lap steel, repetitive lyrics, dissonance and Sarrano's voice, and compared her to Mazzy Star and Mary Margaret O'Hara.
Lift Your Eyes to the Hills features a heavy use of reverb, echoes, multi-tracked vocals, organ and pedal steel, flowing and diffuse sounds creating a "dark and dreamy" style (it "is made of layers of shifting sound strata"), mixed with repetitive, personal experience based lyrics and spiritual imagery. It was chosen in the Top 10 Records of the Year (so far) by Flagpole Magazine (8/12), Top 10 Records of 2012 by Chris Sikich, City Paper, Philadelphia, and Top 20 Records of 2012 by WuOG Radio.
As Thayer Sarrano
Collaborations
Songs
Gronlandic EditHissing Fauna - Are You the Destroyer? · 2007
The Past Is a Grotesque AnimalHissing Fauna - Are You the Destroyer? · 2007
Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other GamesThe Sunlandic Twins · 2005