Tanukichan

With a soft and mysterious sound that balances perfectly between shoegaze atmosphere, heavy dream pop sweetness, and the introspective nature of singer/songwriters, Tanukichan features the songs and voice of multi-instrumentalist Hannah van Loon, with production help from Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear. Their first album, 2018′s Sundays, captured that day’s quiet melancholy, while 2023′s Gizmo added metallic guitars, industrial synths, and a more upbeat attitude to the mix.
Northern California native van Loon began her music career with the group Trails and Ways in 2012. The bandmembers met while attending the University of California, Berkeley, and wove a thick strand of world music into their indie pop sound. Van Loon played lead guitar and keyboards for the group, which released a trio of EPs followed by the 2015 album Pathology.
Van Loon left the band the next year to focus on her own music, which she made under the name Tanukichan. She started working on demos by herself, and released the song “Bitter Medicine” in May 2016. After a friend — Anthony Ferraro of the group Astronauts, etc. — introduced her to Bear, she began to collaborate with him on new songs. She took her live band, which then comprised drummer Aaron Gold and bassist Scott Brown (both of Astronauts, etc.) to Bear’s home studio and laid down four tracks that soon became the Radiolove EP, which was released by Bear’s Company Records in August 2016.
Van Loon went a different route for Tanukichan’s first full-length album, working with Bear exclusively. The pair holed up in Bear’s studio and went about crafting an intimate shoegaze album that relied on drum machines, airy synths, intricately noisy guitars, and van Loon’s light-as-fresh-snow vocals. Van Loon titled the album Sundays, because to her it captured the dreamily reflective feel of a Sunday afternoon. Bear released the album on Company Records in July 2018, just as Tanukichan headed out on a short tour of the U.S. opening for Kero Kero Bonito. The next year, van Loon and her live band toured as openers for the Drums. When the time came to record another album, she and Bear reconvened, and the sounds they made captured van Loon’s love of nu metal as well as a more upbeat attitude inspired by ’90s artists like 311 and Sheryl Crow. Fans of shoegaze need not worry too much, as there are still plenty of reverb-heavy guitars, soft vocals, and dreamlike tempos at the album’s core. Featuring a guest appearance by Aramis Johnson of Enumclaw on one track, Gizmo was released in March 2023 by Company. ~ Tim Sendra