At a moment when rock’s emotional range is often compressed into gestures of swagger or nostalgia, ‘Unobsession,’ the latest album from New York‑based artist Taraneh Azar, arrives with startling clarity. Here is a record that refuses easy categorization: it’s at once fierce and vulnerable, reflective yet restless, a document of someone wrestling with connection, identity, and the space between departure and return.
Taraneh’s sound on ‘Unobsession’ feels akin to a transmission from a restless interior life. She frames her narratives not around tidy resolutions, but around movement, both emotional and literal. The album’s title itself suggests this: unobsession isn’t freedom from longing, but a re-evaluation of what’s worth holding onto and why.
The album opens with the titular title track, a propulsive anthem that sets the tone with forward momentum. There’s an urgency here in the tight rhythmic structure and in Taraneh’s vocal delivery that feels like an insistence on engagement with life’s messier truths rather than retreat. This is not a song that lingers in ambiguity; it lives in it.
Immediately following, “Anything” deepens this theme with a kind of questioning that feels both universal and intimate. The track carries an emotional weight that’s anchored less in lyrical complexity and more in the way Taraneh shapes space around her vocals allowing frustration, longing, and quiet potential to coexist. The simplicity of the arrangement belies a depth of intention, suggesting that sometimes restraint reveals more than indulgence.
One of the album’s most compelling moments comes in “Unravel, Together Again.” Its sweeping structure and layered instrumental backdrop gives the sense of a conversation unfolding over time, not just between people, but within oneself. It encapsulates the album’s central tension: the desire for unity even as one acknowledges the difficulty of it.
In contrast, “False Start” acts as a counterbalance; a shorter, sharper burst of energy that feels like a moment of recalibration. Where “Unravel…” expands outward, “False Start” pulls inward, asking the listener to confront the discomfort of beginnings that don’t go according to plan. There’s an almost rhythmic restlessness here that captures the feeling of trying again, again and again.
Later in the record, “Magic 8” introduces a slightly more subdued, contemplative pace, its textures softer but no less charged with meaning. It’s a reminder that ‘Unobsession’ isn’t solely about forward motion; it’s about assimilation and folding experience into identity without erasing what came before.
Closing tracks like “Passing Through” and “Noorecheshmam” give the album a sense of completion not through conclusion but through reflection. “Passing Through” inhabits its title literally, as if every phrase is a space through which memory and desire pass like wind. Meanwhile, “Noorecheshmam” feels like a quiet coda, a song that rests comfortably within its own rhythmic heartbeat, acknowledging what has shifted without denying what remains.
Musically, Taraneh balances rock’s analog grit with moments of delicate vulnerability. The guitars crunch where they need to and recede when emotional subtlety is at play. The production feels lived‑in, never too slick, the way rock ought to feel when it’s grappling with real, unvarnished emotion.
What makes the album resonate is its refusal to package its themes in cliché. This is not an album about escape or triumph; it’s about engagement, with oneself, with others, and with the oft‑messy space where those encounters happen. Taraneh doesn’t promise easy answers, but she invites the listener into the questions themselves.
‘Unobsession’ is a courageous, intelligent, and emotionally direct rock record. It’s the work of an artist unafraid to inhabit complexity, and it rewards listeners willing to sit with it on its own terms. Taraneh has crafted a compelling portrait of tension and release, not the kind sold as closure, but the richer, more interesting kind that acknowledges how rarely life actually lines up neatly.
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