MEDIA ALERT
INDIE POP DUO TANDM ANNOUNCE NEW EP SIRENS OUT JULY 26
RELEASE DISS TRACK “2QUICK2TRUST” TODAY
STREAM HERE | WATCH THE COMIC-STYLE VISUALIZER HERE
Download album artwork HERE
Photo Credit: Kate Dockeray | Artwork Design: Maxine Beck-Sinderby
(Toronto, ON – June 21, 2023) – TANDM announce a new EP, Sirens, out on July 26. Teeing up their most engaging and enveloping output to date, this forthcoming collection is a potent distillation of the magical individual components that comprise the Toronto duo’s masterful take on alternative pop but with a newfound polish and elevated production style.
On the surface, their songs are charming in their sweet simplicity–effortlessly compelling thanks to graceful melodies, heartfelt lyricism, and syncopated synergy. But the deeper you dig, the more their music seems to transcend time, place, and even stylistic categorization. Today, they release “2quick2trust” – their first diss track. Vocalist/guitarist Maxine Beck-Sinderby explains, “this song was inspired from negative experiences in our music and personal lives, where many have tried to take advantage of us. From having people try to steal our music, take advantage of our band, take advantage of us as humans – this is our response.”
Stream “2quick2trust” HERE
Watch and share the music video HERE
For the music video, they partnered with collaborators Akash Jones and Bronte Brazier (previously “The Man in the Sea”, “Warm Me Up”, “Accidentally in Love”) as well as Evelyn Lougheed who drew the single artwork. It’s a hand drawn comic-style story about a princess who bravely escapes a castle where she was held captive, only to have the Prince Charming knight show up in the final seconds and try to take credit for her escape and work.
Beck-Sinderby elaborates, “When starting TANDM, both Thomas and I were very young and naive to the music scene, and some of the bad people in it. Our kindness, generosity and innocence were taken advantage of, and that put us in a really bad place for confidence and trust in the music industry. ‘2quick2trust’ is a confident clap back at those who have wronged us in the past, proving that all they were to us was nameless and song material.
I have always wanted to write an angrier song, but having such a soft voice has made the realization of that vision difficult. One lesson we took away from ‘2quick2trust’ was that with enough creativity, we can accomplish anything. We were able to write a song that both Thomas and I believe hits the nail on the head, gets our message across and also conveys enough insult without removing the sweet vocal style. By distorting our bass, adding aggressive drum fills (recorded on Tim’s Studer A80 2” 16 Track open reel recorder) and building powerful chord progression and melody, we were able to give it a real punch.”
Link to single artwork HERE
Drawing: Evelyn Lougheed | Artwork Design: Maxine Beck-Sinderby
“2quick2trust” follows their emotive single “The Man in the Sea” inspired by a poem that Beck-Sinderby had written as an assignment when she was in high school. Born from a story by her grandmother: that what caused the ocean waves was a man with a big spoon, stirring the sea. It’s accompanied by a completely handmade, breathtaking stop motion video.
The rhythms in Sirens are entrancing and engaging, drawing the listener into a warm, dreamlike world of stirring melodic dynamism and delicate-but-dauntless vocals. “We definitely took the opportunity to experiment with a more expansive spectrum of sounds and influences this time around,” muses Beck-Sinderby, with Franklin adding: “It’s still TANDM at the core, but we tried to open things up a little bit and it led to some rewarding places.” As with each subsequent release before it, Sirens shows a clear maturation and musical deftness that seemingly packs a decade of experience into a few short months, putting TANDM on an unparalleled tangent to consistently higher plateaus.
Sirens Tracklist:
1. The Man in the Sea
2. Sirens
3. Avalanche
4. 2quick2trust
5. Rambling
Link to hi-res press photo HERE | Credit: Kate Dockeray
The core duo of vocalist/guitarist Maxine Beck-Sinderby and drummer Thomas Franklin first met in their mid-teens and quickly united over a unique creative chemistry. As it happened, Beck-Sinderby’s band was seeking a drummer, and Franklin not only enrolled at the same high school, but started taking lessons at the same music studio.“There was this natural progress anytime we would play together,”
Beck-Sinderby shares. “That eventually led to the two of us working on some of the songs I’d written, and then into actually writing originals together. It always seems like we know where we want a song or part to go, so we can bounce ideas off each other until we get it there.”
The two carried an impressive musical pedigree into their burgeoning partnership. Both are talented and formally trained multi-instrumentalists, with Franklin having studied under heralded jazz drummer Bill Ransom during his teen years in the U.S. and later with Toronto jazz scene staple Anthony Michelli upon moving to Canada. Beck-Sinderby, on the other hand, took piano, guitar, and singing lessons through her
formative years and honed her skills in bedroom studios and open mics, developing a dynamic songwriting prowess well beyond her years. What’s more, she’s benefitted from the guidance of her accomplished uncles: prolific Hollywood composer Christophe Beck (Frozen, Ant-Man) and iconic pianist and polymath Jason Beck, better known to the world as Chilly Gonzales. “Having formal education in both
classical and jazz has been really valuable in coming up with unique arrangements in our more pop-centric world,” Franklin offers. “The better understanding of different genres, the more of a base you have to build on when writing, regardless of the style or complexity of the material.”
TANDM dropped their debut single, “Dreamworld,” in 2018, introducing a sound defined by sparse but seductive instrumentation and Beck-Sinderby’s dulcet vocal style. Their influences are as subtle as they are diverse, weaving tinges of genre-bending modern innovators from Alvvays to Regina Spector to even Vampire Weekend into their work. Twin EPs Reflections, Vol. 1 and 2 came next in 2019, followed by a string of increasingly impressive single releases and a breakout 2022 cover of Counting Crows’ “Accidentally in Love” that propelled them to hundreds of thousands of cross-platform streams and swarms of attention and accolades from fans and industry insiders alike.
Their stock is already soaring in Canada and Sweden, achieving festival slots and having performed alongside famed guitarist and songwriter Janne Schaffer (ABBA, Bob Marley) during one of their annual trips to the latter. Closer to home, they’ve worked with top-tier producers including Tim Abraham (Laila Biali, Royal Wood), been featured on prominent playlists from the CBC and other outlets, landed spins on
SiriusXM satellite radio and high-profile sync placements in popular series, and performed live on Canada’s beloved Breakfast Television. They’ve also made names for themselves independent of their shared project, with Franklin earning a strong social following for his drum videos as TheRedHatDrummer and Beck-Sinderby drawing big audiences to her SwedishB3rry Twitch channel on a regular basis.
Embodying the next phase of TANDM’s artistic flourishing, Sirens is sure to send their delightfully whimsical, simple-but-substantial sounds further around the world, and fans will surely relish the opportunity to dig deeper into the adept, label-defying pair of artists behind it.
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