Taft
Singing has been Taft Mashburn’s musical outlet for most of his life. Raised in the church-going South, Taft picked up singing in choir and in services at a young age. Paired with piano lessons and a wandering imagination, Taft had all the necessary tools to embark on writing songs and compositions at 18 years old.
Singing has been Taft Mashburn’s musical outlet for most of his life. Raised in the church-going South, Taft picked up singing in choir and in services at a young age. Paired with piano lessons and a wandering imagination, Taft had all the necessary tools to embark on writing songs and compositions at 18 years old. With musical stints in New York City, Woodstock, Vermont and California, he has amassed a palette of experiences with which to write his velvet musical reflections. Opting for looseness and impressionism, Taft’s songs emerge from dreams, travelling, and observation, all laced together through an emotionally resonant falsetto.
“goodnight, plum”, the third album from taft, draws power from vulnerability. Performed as a live in-studio concert with minimal overdubs, Taft creates a landscape that is loose and nocturnal, imprinted with eccentricities, presence, and deep emotional space. These performances call to mind the crooning of Sean Nicholas Savage set against rhythms so slack and irregular they would be at home on the earliest Dr. John records. Making “goodnight, plum” was a ritual; a divining of space for the spirit away from the noise of the world. Written in grain silos in Vermont and mountain hideaways in California, these songs ramble freely through complex chord colors, contained and made cogent by the force of Taft’s voice, itself twisting and dissolving like smoke over fire.
