Tanukichan GIZMO

About

When the pandemic hit, Hannah van Loon adopted a dog named Gizmo, who became a much-needed companion while the Bay Area musician wrote her second album as Tanukichan. Aptly named after her new four-legged friend, GIZMO is an exercise in release, whether from situational hindrances — a forced lockdown, for one — or from self-imposed hedonistic coping mechanisms. “A theme I always had floating around was escape,” van Loon explains of her follow-up to 2018’s Sundays. “Escaping from myself, my problems, sadness and cycles.”

To channel the more uplifting spirit she wanted for GIZMO, van Loon turned to the radio pop-rock of her childhood: “I was struck by the in-your-face positivity of the lyrics,” she adds, referencing artists like 311, The Cranberries, and Tom Petty. “I wanted to bring that positivity while writing about the sad and helpless emotions I’d been grappling with.” But GIZMO’s lightheartedness doesn’t make it shallow: “I think that I could let it go, as beautiful as snow,” she murmurs on “Don’t Give Up,” a nu metal-meets-Cocteau Twins groove about the sudden awareness that all the relationships you depend on could vanish instantaneously. Van Loon’s main collaborator on GIZMO was Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear, and the jangly pop earworm “Take Care” showcases the heavily distorted, in-your-face guitarwork reminiscent of Bear’s own psych joints What For? and Mahal. On the hypnotic, wall-of-sound-rocker “Thin Air” featuring Enumclaw, van Loon channels the triumphant grit of The Smashing Pumpkins as she ponders the impermanence of even the most impactful relationships: “I’ll always have the memories/Of how you used to make me see/Until they fell in the ocean/They’re not swimming/They’re not floating.”

Existentialism aside, GIZMO also sees van Loon break out of her sonic comfort zone. “One of the main changes of how I’m approaching music now is that I want to have more fun in the process,” she says, and she walks the line between melodrama and whimsy gracefully: “I can learn something because I’ve been here before,” she sings on the soaring, bittersweet “Been Here Before.” Deftones-inspired thrash drums and
screeching electric guitars are gracefully contrasted with van Loon’s hypnotic, almost deadpan vocal style and a crystal clear acoustic guitar she describes as “cute.” Gizmo the dog suddenly passed away right as van Loon finished the album, but he’s immortalized with his photo on the cover — a fitting emblem of this new era of Tanukichan.

Artist Bio

Tanukichan is the solo project of classically-trained Bay Area native Hannah van Loon, whose music screeched to a halt when she discovered what she affectionately calls “dad rock” in her tween years. Throughout her self-described “sheltered” adolescence, van Loon taught herself guitar by spending hours in front of the radio, replicating riffs and chords from omnipresent bands like The Beatles and Incubus. 

Although van Loon is the creator and leader of Tanukichan, until now, the project could have been considered a collaboration between her and the Grammy-nominated chillwave pioneer Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi. After seeing an early Tanukichan show in 2016, Bear expressed an interest in working with van Loon; Radiolove, Tanukichan’s first headbanger of an EP, arrived on Bear’s own Company Records that same year. The promising four-song project was followed in 2018 by van Loon’s breakout debut LP, Sundays, which prompted her first solo headlining tour and dates opening for artists like Kero Kero Bonito and The Drums. Sundays earned Tanukichan enthusiastic critical acclaim, with Pitchfork writing that it “captures the spirit of a day whose wide-open nature fosters anxieties as well as ambitions” and Rolling Stone lauding its “bruising riffs, taut grooves, and open-road-ready guitar anthems.”

In March 2023, Tanukichan released her sophomore album GIZMO. While still rooted in the eerie shoegaze she’s become known and loved for, it also sees her go beyond her comfort zone, incorporating elements of grunge, industrial synths, nu metal basslines, and electric guitars that culminate into a captivating wall-of-sound. Shortly after the release of GIZMO, van Loon was approached by producer Franco Reid where they bonded over their love for Incubus. That correspondence led to the single “NPC” which was performed while touring heavily in the summer of 2023, opening for artists like Alex G, Alvvays, and Melanie Martinez. 

The new EP Circles, out September 20th, 2024, solidifies van Loon and Reid’s new partnership taking Tanukichan to new heights and sonic territory that feels larger, arena-ready, and more like a highspeed night drive than the hazy summer dream of its predecessors.