Tangerine—the Los Angeles-via-Seattle duo of Marika Justad and Toby Kuhn—today announced their debut album You’re Still The Only One will be released on October 25th, 2024. The LP finds Justad and Kuhn grounded in a world at once natural and mystical, evoking images of clear blue skies, dusky desert magic, pink glowing sunsets, a full moon, or soaking rain. Light pours out of each melodic hook and Justad’s airy vocals add a sense of shimmering whimsy, as showcased in the lush and expansive lead single “Timeless.” A love song laced with ambiguity and existential dread, “Timeless” arrives with a gorgeous video directed by Marika’s sister, Miró Justad. “There’s this uneasiness, this little tug of instability beneath it all,” Marika Justad explains of the track and album. “Sensuality, nature…wanting to feel connected to the organic world, the good and the bad, the blood, the guts, the romance, the sex, the fruit, the rot, the seeds…everything. All of this was on my mind as I began writing.”
Across You’re Still The Only One, Tangerine grapples with all the bittersweet feelings and anxieties that come with getting older, and experiencing loss and change. It’s a journey towards letting go in order to embrace a full spectrum of love, sorrow, pleasure, and pain; it’s a journey towards acceptance of the instability in the world, in order to find peace. All throughout, they call upon the elements to ruminate on the raw, organic, and at times contradictory forces that exist in both people and in nature.
“After a death in my family, I found myself in a process of negotiation with the universe,” Justad explains. “It became an urgent question for me, this idea of how to reconcile with a world that is unreliable, one that seems to reject any simplistic sense of right or wrong, or of meaningful narrative, that we try to place on it. It’s like something just sort of broke open, and I found myself unable to look away from the primal forces at work in the world. I’m trying to tease apart the beauty from the ugliness.”
Tangerine was formed in 2012 by Marika (vocals, guitar), Miró (drums), Toby Kuhn (guitar, production), and former bassist Ryan Baker. Encouraged by early successes such as spins on KEXP and 107.7 The End, and a streaming hit with single “Feel This Way,” the Justads and Kuhn relocated to Los Angeles as a trio in 2017. Soon after, they joined Bleachers on the road as main support for a North American tour and worked with Zach Dawes (Lana Del Rey) and Mikey Schuman (Queens of the Stone Age) on singles “Sly Moon” and “Fever Dream.” But the family loss in 2019 brought everything to a halt, and the band took a much-needed break to process and grieve. In the stillness that followed, Justad and Kuhn began to write what would become their first full-length album as a duo.
Anchored by Kuhn’s eclectic production, You’re Still The Only One takes Tangerine’s signature dreamy sound to richer, fuller heights. Brimming with deep yearning, tender love, curiosity, and self-deprecation, Justad’s restless narrations contemplate releasing fear, judgment, and the desire for control in order to experience both pleasure and pain more fully. The intoxicating and buoyant “Lonely Ride” feels like a culmination of all the lessons she mines across the LP: change, heartbreak, stepping into the unknown, lying on the floor in defeat but still knowing there’s hope. “It’s about the gut-wrenching pain of walking away from a good thing because you know it’s ultimately for the best; that liminal space when it’s time for a change, but you have absolutely no idea what comes next. Leaping, but not knowing if there’s anything or anyone waiting below to catch you,” Justad explains. “It’s about someone who has been to hell and back with the scars to prove it, but can still find beauty in the mystery of things.”
