Tone Glow 225: Tara Clerkin Trio
An interview with the Bristol-based rock band about the group's origins, making cheery songs in dark times, and how John Berger and DVD-menu music informed their new LP, 'Somewhere Good' (2026)
Tara Clerkin Trio
Tara Clerkin Trio is a rock band from Bristol. While the group’s beginnings are as the Tara Clerkin Band—a psych-rock outfit featuring eight different members—the collective’s pared-down iteration is nevertheless sprawling, featuring influences that range from downtempo to trip-hop to post-rock to Kosmische, all in a cheery, cozy manner without being cloying. The trio is made of three intertwined members: Tara Clerkin (b. 1990), her partner Sunny Joe Paradiso (b. 1990), and the latter’s brother Patrick Benjamin (b. 1996). In 2020 the group released their self-titled debut LP and followed it up with two EPs, In Spring (2021) and On the Turning Ground (2023). Their newest album is titled Somewhere Good (2026) and features eight songs that expand on their subtle but varied sonic palette, simultaneously honing in on traditional song forms while indulging in resplendent, long-form jams. Joshua Minsoo Kim interviewed the Tara Clerkin Trio on May 27th, 2026 to discuss their childhood, the Bristol scene they emerged from, and the ideas informing their new album.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: What are the earliest memories you have of engaging with art? And this could be music or film or dance—anything.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: For me, a lot of it was music. My mum played music a lot, and she used to take me to gigs when I was very young—my friends would be playing in this social center that we used to go to a lot. And we’d have parties in the house. I remember being a toddler and coming into the living room and they’re all sat there, smoking and drinking and listening to music, curling up on the sofa or in the corner. Those were high-impact memories.
Tara Clerkin: One of my earliest memories of being floored by music is when my brother showed me Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992). We were on holiday in Ireland and we were lying in the garden and watching the stars and he was like, “Hey, check this out.” And I was like, “Whoaaa.” (laughter). We were talking about the size of the universe and the distance of the stars. I was 12 or something.
Patrick Benjamin: I had piano lessons. Also, when I was little my dad took me to folk festivals quite a lot and they were awesome. I remember falling asleep to Nick Harper and then him telling me afterwards that while I was asleep, he met him and chatted to him. “Oh, the guy from the stage? No way!” (laughter).
I like that all three of you mentioned stuff that involves music in a social context, of music being a glue that brings people together. Is that how you all interfaced with music through your teenage years, too? Obviously Pat and Sunny Joe, you two are brothers, but I’m curious if that’s the case in general.
Patrick Benjamin: I remember getting to a certain age where I started going to parties and would put on certain music and nobody would like it (laughter). So that’s an anti-social bit, but there were one or two people who’d be like, “I know this!” or “What is this?” and you’d spark conversation and be friends forever.
What would you play?
Patrick Benjamin: At that age it was stuff like Four Tet and Burial.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I remember being out and going back to a friend’s house and lying down. I put on Connan Mockasin’s “Forever Dolphin Love” and the beginning has this really drone-y section. I was just on the bed, really vibing out, and my friend’s friend was like, “Who is this?” “Connan Mockasin, man.” “This is fucking horrible.” (laughter). I thought he was gonna be like, “This is so sick!” (laughter).
Tara Clerkin: Yeah, going to parties when you’re young and coming out in school as someone who’s into a particular type of music—not-normal music—and then finding your little scene there. Playing gigs, and seeing the people that you know in your city go on stage in front of you and do amazing stuff—it’s all tied together with the enjoyment of music.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: When I was starting to go clubbing around 16, going to raves and free parties, I was like, “Oh shit, there’s a whole underground!” But there’s an earlier bit, too, when you realize that you’re a bit of a freak. I was what we used to call “grebos” in the Midlands. These are people who’d experiment with painting their nails black. You’d have big baggy jeans, and there were these things that would make you stand out and be ridiculed, even physically threatened. A lot of that is tied with the cultural identity of expressing yourself. When we were young, it was blink-182 and Rage Against the Machine to start with, and then you’d begin to dig more, and music was always a very big part of that identity.
Patrick Benjamin: I got into dance music when I was not of age, and there’s the thing that Burial talks about, of this music that’s nostalgic for a period of clubbing that doesn’t really exist in the same way anymore. I kind of had the reverse of that, where I was nostalgic for the clubbing I was definitely going to have, and then I went to clubs when I was 17 in this small town—where none of the clubs are good—and I was like, “Wait, is this… good?” (laughter). And maybe there was a scene previously and there is now, but I was just in this spot where I was like, oh there’s so little good that you can go out and see.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: A bit of a lull in the Shrewsbury cultural scene (laughter).
Patrick Benjamin: There was a techno night there once a month called Traffic. It was at a pub called The Vaults. It’s like a sports bar now.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I used to go out to The Vaults as well, when I was a teenager. It hasn’t got the same vibes anymore.
In the early 2010s, Bristol was important for y’all because of things like Howling Owl and Stolen Recordings. Do you mind talking to me about what it was like at the time and what made it unique?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: It was very DIY. Bristol is a mid-sized city, especially when we first moved there—it wasn’t quite on the map. Obviously there are periods when it was known for things, like for trip-hop, so there is a musical prestige or whatever, but when we were there it was not a place where you’d be like, “I’m gonna get signed, I’m gonna get rich.” It was just not a thing that entered into the dynamic. It was very “by and for the community,” and we were just having fun. It was a lot of crossover between the different scenes, a lot of mixed bills. A lot of people who went to the analog techno nights also went to the power-pop nights or the punk nights or the weird, experimental improv stuff. It was very welcoming and inspiring as well. The music was great, and you’d go to a gig and see four bands doing completely different things, and you’d be motivated. And since everyone was friends, it was just a way for us to enjoy each other’s music. We could put on DIY shows in unusual places or in people’s houses—there are some decent mid-sized venues in Bristol, but a few have shut down. The more art-space, squattish-type ones aren’t there anymore, really. Me and Tara haven’t been back in a few years, but back in the day, I really enjoyed it and got a lot from it.
Patrick Benjamin: I came in the tail end of it, and it was such a lovely group of people—very welcoming. There were loads of people who’d encourage you to do music.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: It was very unpretentious and not gatekeep-y. It was very encouraging, and you could find people to play with, and people would put you on. It had a very positive vibe.
Tara Clerkin: I didn’t really play music before finding that scene. I wrote a bit of poetry, and then I wrote and recorded one song on GarageBand, and then right away there were six people who were like, “Let’s perform this live! I can do that part! I have this equipment!” It was because of that ethos that I even started at all.
Was there a point at which you decided to commit more strongly to music?
Tara Clerkin: It just kind of built up slowly. At one point I was doing pottery and music at the same time, and then I decided to put the ceramics on hold and focus more on the music; that was after our first album [Tara Clerkin Trio (2020)] came out.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I remember you showing us your first couple demos. There were a few big houses we lived in at various points, and there was one called The Pink House, which was an eight-bed, big townhouse with lots of people living in it. You lived there and you showed me some demos, some bedroom recordings, and I remember being like, “These are great.” We lived in another big house called Belvoir, and a lot of us would play each other’s music. We kind of called it the Belvoir House Band, unofficially. If Karl was fronting it, it’d be called Karl Band. If it was Ed Penfold fronting it, it’d be Ed Penfold Band. And if Tara was fronting it, it’d be Tara Clerkin Band. It was the same musicians, but whoever was the songwriter, it became their named project. It was an amalgam band that did all these different projects, but some of them gained more traction than others, or others wound down.
Tara Clerkin: There wasn’t a point where I was like, “This is a thing I do.” It was more like, okay, this is the next thing. “Do you want to play a gig?” “Yes.” “Do you want to release a tape?” “Yes.”
Sunny Joe Paradisos: And that’s what it is. Music is all about moving goalposts. When you’re starting a band, what do bands do? They play gigs and record music and try to sell it. When you start doing that, you’re not like, “I’m on this path that’s gonna lead to getting signed.” But as you continue to make music, you realize that the goalpost is constantly changing, and there isn’t really a point at which you’re like, “I’m a musician.” We’re not all full-time professional musicians, but we’re years down the line of that process. And it’s not a tangible thing you can achieve, you know what I mean? It’s this weird thing you flail through.
Patrick Benjamin: Before I lived in Bristol, I was making little bits on Ableton. I remember sending something to Sunny and he sent it to Joe [Hatt] of Howling Owl, and he emailed me like, “Oh, I wanna put this out!” I made a bunch of new stuff for that, and they did a thing where they did it as download codes. They were printed on little strips of paper that were put inside clay balls, and you had to crack the clay ball open to get the download code. It was a comment on the superfluous nature of the modern streaming age. It was very low pressure. And from there it was like, okay, let’s play shows.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I felt nostalgic looking at your old SoundCloud. For you, Patch, you’re a bit younger and your first tunes are from when you were 14. Our brother is Simon and there’s a song called “Si Likes Sugar in His Tea,” and it’s a nice ambient, electronic song. And I was like, “Wow, I remember these tunes!”
Patrick Benjamin: It’s nice having that be there. Simon makes music as well, and we were talking about how there was a period when you could just put stuff on the internet and people would listen to it. Now, it’s a lot harder. My partner is doing it at the moment and trying to find press for it, to get people to listen to it. But there was this period where you could put things on SoundCloud.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: The algorithm has become such a gatekeeper, hasn’t it?
Tara, I’m curious about your debut album, Hello (2017). You mentioned how you made pottery and I’m curious if you saw any link between these two practices at all. And I’m curious about this period in general for you. I know Sunny Joe played on that album as well.
Tara Clerkin: That was a long time ago—I think I started making it in 2015. After we played some gigs and I released a few singles on some tape compilations, Howling Owl and Stolen Body asked if I wanted to make an album. I really liked the first few albums from Osees when they were called OCS. That was the main inspiration for the sound world that I wanted to build—where you feel like you’re in the room with it, and then sometimes it drifts off. I was also getting into a lot of minimalism as well.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: And Micachu & The Shapes was a big influence as well.
Tara Clerkin: Yeah. I wasn’t coming from a musical background, and definitely not a music technology background, so I could hear how stuff like OCS was made and felt that I could do it myself. I never really thought that the music and pottery were connected, but at one point I thought that I was splitting my creative mind in two and that I should focus my mind on one and see what happens. But actually, the more creative stuff you do, the more ideas you have—for me, anyway. Doing the pottery alongside the music just feeds this state of mind of thinking creatively all the time, in different ways.
So how did this all turn into the Tara Clerkin Trio? I know the band originally had eight people in it. And how did Patrick get into the fold?
Patrick Benjamin: I begged them (laughter).
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I remember we needed someone to play keyboards for the album launch. It was still Tara Clerkin Band playing Tara Clerkin music, and Tara Clerkin Trio was kind of a joke because we ended up being the three remaining people who turned this into something else. And we thought the name sounded kind of jazzy, and maybe it was supposed to sound jazzy, conceptually.
Tara Clerkin: And Pat was bringing the jazz with his piano.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: The big band was psych-y, garage-y, and experimental. And when there were fewer people, it changed.
Patrick Benjamin: We covered Steve Kuhn’s “The Meaning of Love” (1971), and that’s when things got a little jazzy. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to become jazzy. “In the Room” was the first trio song that we did. We borrowed someone’s loop pedal and did this short loop where I’ve laid up some clarinet, and then we just jammed it. We thought it was cool, and that’s how we write all our songs (laughter).
Sunny Joe Paradisos: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think the jazz thing came from trip-hop, hip-hop, and downtempo. We got a looper and started experimenting with sampling. Jazzy samples are a big part of a certain type of hip-hop, electronica, and downtempo, so it was us trying to make our own version of that stuff, but sampling ourselves instead of sampling jazz records.
What artists were you looking to as reference points?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: One of the first things we did was us trying to make something sound like a Sun Ra sample. But there’s a lot of British downtempo music from the late ’90s and early 2000s that has this twee vibe. Amon Tobin has it at points, but his stuff is a bit darker.
Tara Clerkin: DJ Krush.
Patrick Benjamin: Lemon Jelly.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: There’s a band called Alpha that has music like that. Some of it is kind of silly sounding, but it was chillout music. Chillout compilations were actually a big thing, even aesthetically. There are some amazing album covers where someone is sat in some white CGI beanbag with some big headphones on and there’s a TV with fish on it (laughter). I love that aesthetic.
Patrick Benjamin: I remember one early reference point you kept bringing up was old Orange adverts. They were a mobile phone provider in the UK and in one era, their ad campaigns were this weird, futuristic thing.
You did the design for the first Tara Clerkin Trio album, Patrick.
Patrick Benjamin: Kind of. I was the pair of hands that put it together in Photoshop. But we did it all together; it was a communal effort.
I can kind of see where you’re coming from with this chillout comparison because there’s the one image with that random blue shape on the beach (laughter).
Patrick Benjamin: That was it! It was those inserts.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: The blue guy was in those different spaces, yeah. And on SoundCloud, I saw that we did that COVID mix, and we had the blue guy in your living room with the big view of the city at night, which is actually the same view as the album cover. And there’s a bottle of wine and a glass on the table (laughter). So that was definitely the vibe we were going for.
Was there a reason to release the shorter EPs after this first album instead of compiling more material for a full album? Was it because World of Echo wanted something out in a short span of time?
Tara Clerkin: In Spring (2021) was just supposed to be a single, but then we ended up making so much stuff and it fitted together thematically, so we were like… it’s four songs.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: Materially, COVID happened. People started being like, “Do you wanna record for a week?” Studio times were expensive so every time we went in, we did as much as we could. Those ended up being the beginnings of that and the next EP, On the Turning Ground (2023). It felt different during COVID, but there’s a balance where you don’t want to sit on stuff for too long—things belong in the context in which they are made. And things move on so quick nowadays. We could’ve waited to make an album, but both of those EPs feel like complete EPs, and they feel like sisters—they’re from a similar period, one is a progression from another, and they were made in a similar way. I kind of see them together as an album.
Patrick Benjamin: With Turning Ground, we got to a point where we had enough material for it to be a longer thing, at least in theory. But there was a fair bit that we couldn’t get to work and it felt right with the songs we had to finish them off and make it this self-contained thing.
What sort of things were you not able to work out? And what sort of things were you able to make happen?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: Songwriting was coming more into it at that point. And straight loop-based jams, which we had more previously, were maybe not going anywhere. Rather than stuff being random textures, we wanted to write proper songs. That was the beginning of that. If you’re just recording for a week, you can end up with a lot of bits.
Tara Clerkin: Some of them were quite hard to let go of. There are a few where we really believed that it was good, but we also knew that it wasn’t finished. And maybe we can go back to them.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: There’s that one Stereolab album that’s a B-sides album, and it’s one of my favorites from them. It’s Space Age Batchelor Pad Music (1993). In the vinyl there’s an insert, and for every single track it’s like, “We made this track at this time and we didn’t include it because blah.” It’s really interesting.
Patrick Benjamin: We should do that. We’ve got so many bits of crap (laughter).
Sunny Joe, you just mentioned that you were making more “proper songs.” What makes something a “proper song” for the Tara Clerkin Trio? Is it just that you’re relying less on a loop pedal?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: By proper songs I guess more like traditional songs. An instrumental piece can be conceptual and atmospheric, but without lyrics, you still can’t convey stuff that clearly—you can only bring senses of stuff. When you bring lyrics into something, you have structure to think about and how that all works as a composition. So maybe it’s about songs where you marry those things together. I don’t wanna use the word “pop” because I don’t think it’s the right description—people have been like, “This is their most poppy record!” and that’s not something I’m averse to, but I don’t think it’s poppy.
Tara Clerkin: I think people are talking about classic song structures.
Patrick Benjamin: People use that word to mean so many things.
With the new album, Somewhere Good (2026), how are you deciding if a song should have lyrics or not?
Tara Clerkin: We always write at least the barebones of the song, and then I write the melody and then I write the lyrics. Some of them, we just know that we have strong ideas that we can convey without lyrics and don’t consider it. I don’t know why, really, but it just feels that way.
Patrick Benjamin: Sometime it’s just like, this thing we’ve made with some loops would slap as a song, and it’d be really good to have some lyrics that could bring some structure to it.
Tara Clerkin: And we’ll jam a lot, yeah. I’ll just make sounds with my mouth (starts humming melodies) over the music, while we’re writing it. Sometimes it’s really hard, like, “I know what this song is about and all it needs is the lyrics.” Those are the hardest ones.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: “Silently,” you pontificated on for a while. You had a very specific thing, and once you got it, that was that.
Tara Clerkin: Right. “Lazy Daisy” was quite hard, and that’s because it was a very vocal-led song. I really liked doing it, but it takes a long time to distill your ideas and have it carry meaning while remaining sparse.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: And one word can change the meaning so deeply. For that song, you’re trying to write an upbeat song about how shit pointless jobs are, but how do you say that without sounding mopey, without putting people in a downer space, without sounding entitled? It can be such a fine line to get to the place you want where you’re expressing the thing you want in the way you want to express it—it’s so nuanced. There will be one little rejig and it completely changes how something comes across.
Tara Clerkin: And it’s in the melody as well—how you deliver each line.
Patrick Benjamin: From my perspective, as someone who’s just playing instruments and contributing loops sometimes, we’ll be jamming and I’ll think, we need lyrics to hold everything in place.
Is that an intentional maneuver with this album, to not put people in a downer mood?
Tara Clerkin: Yeah. We talked a lot about emotions while writing this album. That was a big difference from the other things we’ve released, and that was always what came up—recognizing difficult emotions but not wallowing in them. A lot of the music we really like is commenting on shit stuff, but we’re offering some light to it in some way.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: There’s the song “Pigs… (In There)” by Robert Wyatt. And there’s things by Ivor Cutler. My mental state is very linked to the stuff that I absorb, and there is a lot of stuff to absorb now—there’s a lot thrown at us. I’d rather contribute something that feels lighter and more positive, and hopefully there’s something empowering that comes from that. Being aware of the ills of the world can be an important part of the process. You should feel angry about stuff but at the same time, too much of that can be paralyzing and it can put you in a blackpilled kind of headspace, and it’s hard not to get too much of that these days if you’re not careful. Times feel dark, and I think a lot of people feel conscious of all this.
A lot of the music I hear on the radio now, and the music that people are putting out, seems to be connecting to “goodness” in this way I like. It’s trendy now to be nice and care about stuff, and that’s real progress. There’s a song we’ve been referencing a lot: “Power of Love” by Nocturnal Emissions. It’s great because it’s the most chirpy song I’ve ever heard, but the lyrics are about having a bloody revolution and smashing all the power structures. It’s actually quite violent. When I heard that, it blew me away. When I hear it I’m like, maybe we can win all these battles. And I feel that way more than if I’d heard all these things over a more negative-sounding bit of music.
Tara Clerkin: When we end up using a lot of discordant sounds, it can quickly go into a dark-sounding place, so a lot of the time when we build up and add more tones to the mix, we do stop and be like, “Oh, that’s gone dark.” And then Patch is like, “That’s because it’s a diminished blah blah.” (laughter).
Sunny Joe Paradisos: The basslines may reference jungle and drum ‘n’ bass, which is very feel-good music, but there’s something about those low, simple basslines that feel quite invigorating and positive.
Patrick Benjamin: The basslines in drum ‘n’ bass tend to be more complicated and they’ll have some weird accidentals in there to keep the movement going. Our basslines may sound drum ‘n’ bass, but the melodies are more like dub or something. It’s simpler and repetitive and driving.
Something like “Slow Island” has such a reggae bassline.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: Oh yeah.
And something like “Movin’ On” sounds like it could get darker but then it ends up being more cartoonish.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: That song was inspired by the DVD menu for the boxset of Spaced (laughter). All the characters are floating around and saying quotes from the show, like, “Babylon 5’s a big pile o’ shit!” It’s got a certain vibe.
Are there any other unexpected reference points that people wouldn’t get from hearing the album?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: Bach is a reference point for all of us.
Tara Clerkin: Bossa nova for “Silently,” but because the lyrics are about being a woman and how you’re perceived in the world and how you perceive yourself, we wanted to echo a bit of ’90s R&B—there’s the Spanish-y guitar there.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: You also wrote the lyrics after reading the John Berger essay, Ways of Seeing (1972).
Tara Clerkin: The lyrics were entirely inspired by that. There’s a passage in it where he says, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping […] And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.” I read that and very much identified with this description, and it was the first time that I had considered that it wasn’t a universal experience, that it was something that comes from society. It was on my mind quite a lot, and I wanted to describe it myself and how trippy it is. I was thinking of all the things that perpetuate that—watching MTV when I was a teenager, thinking of these music videos which objectify women, but loving the music and it being an influence on me musically, too. It was all a nod to that.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about the other band members?
Sunny Joe Paradisos: We have a lot of personal connections. Something I love about Patch is that he’s a good-vibes guy, not as in he’s like, “Everything’s good,” but he’s always nice to be around. He always makes every hang more enjoyable for his presence, which makes it really nice to be in a band with him. And it’s nice to have him as a brother.
Patrick Benjamin: That’s very sweet.
Tara Clerkin: Pat is very excited about things very often, which I enjoy, especially on tour. It makes things exciting for me.
Patrick Benjamin: Yeah, like particular train lines (laughter).
Tara Clerkin: Yeah. Or the hot dogs in Copenhagen (laughter).
Sunny Joe Paradisos: They’re not remarkable hot dogs—just basic street hot dogs.
Patrick Benjamin: They’re good! (laughter). I guess you live in Chicago so you’ve got that there, but it’s a novelty for us to be able to get a tasty hot dog on every street corner (laughter). Both of these guys have shown me a lot of interesting music and they have a lot of interesting ideas. And they always know how to turn that into something good, into something real. They’re very inspiring.
Tara Clerkin: Aww. And well, the thing about Sunny is that he’s funny. He’s very funny on stage as well.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: I do stupid bants.
Patrick Benjamin: Both me and Tara are too scared to do stage bants, so Sunny brings all that.
Tara Clerkin: He brings plenty.
Sunny Joe Paradisos: The thing about Tara is that she’s very naturally talented, she’s a creative person. She didn’t come from a musical background but she’s very good at making music, she writes excellent lyrics, she’s good at making pottery. You’re just very good at it all. I think it’s easy for people who are naturally talented at things to have imposter syndrome because they think they don’t deserve it, but you do. And you work very, very hard at it.
Tara Clerkin: Aww, thank you.
Thank you for reading the 225th issue of Tone Glow. The elusive Copenhagen dog…
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New record is tremendous. Wonderful interview!
Loved this one from the hometown..things are getting better ✌️❤️