As Tanukichan, Bay Area musician Hannah van Loon is familiar with the transformative potential of distortion. Nowhere was that clearer than on her first release with Company Records, 2018’s Sundays. The dream pop stylings she leaned into captured the multidimensional contemplation that happens during a bout of Sunday Scaries: anxiety stemming from instability, the doldrums that come with respite, an underlying desire for something more. In the years following Sundays’ release, van Loon has endured even less stability. She centered herself by adopting a dog she christened Gizmo, whose own sense of whimsy rubbed off on her. This newfound companion’s brightness translates brilliantly on GIZMO, her second LP as Tanukichan.
While the ethereality of dream pop and the intensity of shoegaze remain some of her favorite tools, as heard on record opener “Escape,” van Loon leaned into radio rock to generate the uplifting, pop-sourced sensibilities that make many of GIZMO’s brightest tracks so memorable. The melodic, nu metal-invoking “Don’t Give Up” possesses this exact shine. Her gently frolicking vocals pair brilliantly with grungy riffs that build into eyebrow-furling intensity before plummeting into gentle rocker “A Bad Dream.”
While Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear remains a primary collaborator across GIZMO’s production, Tanukichan also invites PNW rockers Enumclaw to join her on “Thin Air,” a rumination on impermanence. While van Loon grapples with despair and ephemerality quite nakedly, her production choices don’t let listeners languish in stillness, instead instigating moments of thrashing and bouncing. While, tragically, Gizmo the dog passed away just as van Loon completed the record, GIZMO is a testament to the beautiful ways that a contrasting companion can inspire all of us to channel our emotions in new, distinctive ways.
To celebrate Tanukichan’s beautiful, bombastic new record, van Loon shares with us the inspiration behind the album’s 10 tracks, shining a light on the challenges she seeks to confront and the systems she balances while composing brilliant works of rockstardom.
1. “Escape”
This song is about someone I fell for real hard, but we only saw each other a few times a year. It was really confusing and kept resurfacing, so I gave up trying to get over it. He said I should be myself, be more confident, but being shy is just part of me.
2. “Don’t Give Up”
This song is about feeling I haven’t done anything with my life, but also knowing that I’ve accomplished a lot and it’s only getting better. I started writing the lyrics when I was on tour opening for The Drums after my first album came out. We were playing sold-out shows in front of hundreds of people, but I knew it could change in an instant. I felt like I hit rock bottom emotionally—I wasn’t ready for the road and it killed me. I felt so disconnected from the band even though they were my backbone and were making it happen. The only thing that really helps me at that point is feeling like I can just let everything go, and we all die. Just accepting the fact that I can’t control anything and that in the end it doesn’t matter. We will all disappear.
I wrote the chorus years later when I was finishing a bunch of the songs. I didn’t want it to be depressing, even though that’s where it came from. It came from giving up, but I wanted to keep going. I wanted it to mean something, moving on from the negative, and I came up with a ridiculously positive chorus. Don’t give up now, you know there’s another day, just know you’re going to get to a better place—a better place meaning a better place in life, or “heaven,” just nothingness where all your worries are gone.
3. “A Bad Dream”
This song is about experiences from your past coming back to haunt you, and trying to connect with people from your past who were part of those experiences. I’ve felt an immense rift where the closer I try to get to them the further away I realize I am. Some of the lyrics are quite literal depictions of my experiences, but I chose these lyrics because it also sounds like I’m breaking up with a lover. It also has connotations of that for me, too. Someone who is too attached, thinks they are just right for you, but it’s over.
4. “Been Here Before”
This is about trying to get away from it all, feeling like it’s impossible for me to live in this world/society. It’s almost like a reset, because you can’t do anything but just wait to feel better. “Think about all of the good things everyone has said.” I feel like I have some social anxiety and sometimes I spend hours going over everything wrong I did, but have to keep reminding myself of the good things in my life so I don’t spiral out of control.
5. “Make Believe”
This song is about different kinds of belief in my life. I grew up religious, and I am so over people with spiritual inclinations trying to convince me that things you can’t see are real, or that there is something out there to believe in. It’s empowering to me to accept that I can let that go. It feels good to not believe in anything, not hold on to anything, but just do your best.
6. “Like You”
This song is about feeling that I can never really be close to someone. Even if I had everything I wanted, I still felt empty and like life has no meaning. Looking back on my life I’ve always just moved on to another partner, I just want another high, another drink. I’ve felt like that is what life is, and why should it not be? I’ve been trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m allowed to feel that way. My life is my life, and that’s what the chorus is about: Just knowing that it’s OK to be however I am.
7. “Thin Air”
This song is about exes, some people that I really cared about but ultimately didn’t want to be with. The sadness I feel when I’m hurting someone, and missing them, and knowing you won’t ever have that closeness again. It’s about how important they are and how much they’ve taught me, or helped me, but how I also know that people come and go. The chorus has a double meaning for me where I feel like I can’t prioritize relationships because I need to keep focusing on myself. The other is feeling like I’m broken, and keep ending up with the wrong people and hurting them.
8. “Nothing to Lose”
This song is partly about psychedelics. I just want to experience everything in life. I just want to feel everything and try everything, and there is a certain realization you have when you’re really high that your life doesn’t matter, and someday I’ll be dead and won’t remember anything. I feel like I’ve had more success than I ever imagined I would, but even then I felt like I had nothing in my life and could risk it all. It’s sad to realize that, but also very freeing and empowering.
9. “Take Care”
I wrote this song when I was feeling especially depressed. I felt so down and bummed out that I started cutting people out of my life. I felt like whenever I had interactions with others I was such a drag that I would bring down the mood. I had nothing I wanted to talk about, so I just cut off from people. It was painful to feel isolated, and I craved companionship or friendship even more, but I knew that someday I would come out of it, and hopefully we would be friends again.
10. “Mr. Rain”
This is about the same person that I fell for. It felt like an addiction, and maybe led to me feeling like I had a kind of addictive relationship with substances. This song is about that…and accepting that this is how it is, and this is how I am. It doesn’t help to fight the feeling even though I’ve tried. It’s about giving up being OK with it.
