Each Measure Feature: Tamar Berk
FEATURE
I’ve always felt that deliberation was the essence of artistry. I’m a sucker for albums that feel deliberate, like every note, word, and instrument in every track was chosen with care in service of a greater purpose. “OCD”, Tamar Berk’s narrative of introspection, is a great example. Every element coalesces to create an image of the artist’s inner world. There’s a throughline of grief, but it’s not all doom and gloom.
Tamar Berk’s album, especially its lead singles, “Stay Close By” and “OCD,” showcases her talent for mature, poignant songwriting. Berk suffers from OCD, and she describes the album as being “about the chaos I live with internally – the constant loop of anxiety, memory, control, regrets, and perfectionism. But it’s also about trying to find the humor and beauty in it, too.”
Berk masters these conflicting emotions with poetic grace, but she also isn’t afraid to be blunt. The first line of the title track is an honest, straightforward, “I’ve got OCD.” She doesn’t try to dress it up, and I have to admire the courage that demands. Other tracks, like “My Turn Will Come,” “I Had a Dream I Was Lost in an Auditorium,” and “I’m In the Day After” capture Berk’s constant battle with her own psyche with painful clarity. The refrain, “over and over and over” in the title track is a perfect chorus to describe the feeling of living with OCD, evoking the image of a never-ending cycle of internal battles played on repeat.
But the album is about resilience as much as suffering. Lines like, “But this rainy day and my guitar / Make me sing over and over and over” add a note of hope to the title track. “There Are Benefits to Mixed Emotions” seems to find peace in uncertainty, and “Any Given Weeknight” celebrates the joy of youthful exuberance. In spite of her battle with OCD, Berk thrives, laughs, and creates. For me, one of the most powerful moments comes at the end of the bridge of the title track, where she sings, “I’ve been this way for so long I don’t know how there could be any other way.” There’s a sadness to this, as Berk can’t imagine a life free of her disorder, but there’s also an undertone of self-acceptance as she asserts that she’s whole, alive, and beautifully uniquenevertheless.
The setting for this depiction of inner conflict is a fuzzy, vertiginous soundscape of electric guitars, synthesizers, trumpets, and a dizzy-sounding Wurlitzer. The atmosphere is as bright and bouncy as it chaotic, and it makes the perfect complement for her description of the world inside her head.
That’s what I mean by “deliberate.” The interplay between the music and lyrics is purposeful on every track. Berk uses both to enrich her palette as she paints an intimate portrait of life with OCD, elevating the album to the status of art. My recommendation: listen over and over and over.
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