A natural storyteller, Tamar Berk delights with her honest new collection, ocd.

By Graeme Smith

Feature photo by Brandon Mosquera

Tamar Berk’s music has been featuring on our pages since September 2024. We’ve shared two of her singles and her previous album, Good Times for a Change.

Stay Close By teased her new album earlier this month, a track I described as “fuzzy, distorted… and melancholic.” It marks an optimistic start to the album. “This song is about a hopeful optimism that hasn’t quite panned out yet,” Berk explained when the single was released.

On the album she said: “it’s about the chaos I live with internally — the constant loop of anxiety, memory, control, regrets, and perfectionism, but it’s also about trying to find the humour and beauty in it, too.”

We get that sense of chaos early on as title track ocd pours out a confession against a soft and funky arrangement. It proves an early highlight.

The humour too comes through in tracks like there are benefits to mixed emotions, indiesleaze 2005, and the jaunty time zone, another highlight.

And ‘beauty’ describes it all. It finds that beauty in the mess, enjoying the unpolished moments as much as the slick ones.

You ruined this city for me is a rousing, quick-fire effort. Any given weeknight, by contrast, is gentle, acoustic, and intimate. Tell me why is a folksy, philosophical moment near the end of the album. Ghost stories ends the album strongly through a slow-building reflection on the light and dark of our world.

Ocd is out now, and you can listen to it below.