Tara Simmons is a musician determined never to become bored. Critically-acclaimed, industry-recognised and currently on fire with her songwriting game, her catalogue varies between simple folk-driven pop to glitchy, cut-up sample-based electronic. Listen to her songs and you will wonder how do these remarkable sounds come to be? Well aside from being proficient in traditional elements like voice and keys and occasionally whipping out a cello, Tara has been known to shovel around her bathroom, bedroom or even kitchen drawers to find something new and interesting to sample and feature in her music.
Take the Courier Mail People’s Choice finalist ‘The Recycling Bin Song’ for example. The song itself is a hauntingly fascinating, but listen a bit closer and you might be able to recognize the sounds of a ring-top can, a Jatz box and a paper toilet-paper wrapper being scrumpled to set the up-front impression. All this is expertly and effortlessly inserted into the mix with innovative synth sounds, acoustic instruments and, to quote the singer herself, “other cut-up shit”…

Tara first came to prominence through 2006’s self-recorded, self-produced and self-financed Pendulum EP, a stunning set of seven songs that not only displayed her influences of early German electronica, folk-pop and experimentalism but also quickly brought her to the attention of her music peers. It snared her a Q Music Award nomination in the Alternative Category, scored her management as well as securing some national airplay on Triple J and umpteen community radio stations around Australia.

The second EP - All The Amendments – closely followed and the accolades continued stacking up, with the ABC 612 declaring it ‘Album Of The Week’, Triple J continuing their support by playing ‘The Recycling Bin Song’ and ‘Trip Over’ and, once again, saw Tara receive numerous nominations at the Q Music Awards.

EPilation - a compilation of the two EPs – again, came quickly purely through a reluctance to cough up the dough for a double pressing. The idea quickly beyond the simple idea to merely combine the two EPs and instead, the 11 tracks were re-mastered and re-sequenced and now sit together as they should be heard and really belong – in the form of an album. It was at this point that even taste-maker and music director Nic Harcourt from LA’s influential KCRW jumped on the bandwagon, playing ‘Break The Rules For Me’ on his widely listened to Morning Becomes Eclectic program.

Tara continues the originality on-stage, choosing to perform with the unique configuration of voice, keys, laptop, three cellos, double bass and drums. It’s this diversity that has seen her play alongside the likes of everybody from international visitors My Latest Novel (Glasgow) and Home Video (New York) right through to homegrown heroes like The Audreys, Eskimo Joe, The Living End and Kate Miller-Heidke.

Coming off her first East Coast tour and with a video on the telly for ‘Everybody Loves You’, a couple of songs featuring in the independent film All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane and her song writing more prolific than ever, the stage is set for her debut full-length album.