The credits Stephen Kalinich and Jon Tiven have racked up since the ’60s and ’70s are impressive enough to warrant a listen to their new album out of sheer respect. Poet Kalinich collaborated with the Beach Boys as early as the late-‘60s (co-writing the single “Little Bird” with Dennis Wilson), while Tiven has worked with everyone from legends the Rolling Stones and Alex Chilton to contemporary acts like Warpaint and Alabama Shakes.
Together, however, the prolific duo make awfully fine music on their own. Their latest album Each Soul Has a Voice is the result of songwriting sessions that yielded a whopping 700 tracks, and 14 of the pair’s best were chosen.
“Stephen and I became songwriting/recording (and sometimes performing) partners about five years ago with the intention of breaking out of our selves and creating some new music with intrinsic value unlike anything we’d done before,” says Tiven. “We wanted to get away from the predictable, cynical music made in today’s pessimistic climate. This music is not necessarily easy to categorize to fit it into a square peg radio format. The music we make together could never be mistaken for the Beach Boys, Alex Chilton, B.B. King, P.F. Sloan, Wilson Pickett or Don Covay, although due to our proximity to these artists there are elements in common. We are neither fish nor fowl, but we rile against the foul — the materialists, those who celebrate celebrity, those who are narcissistic, unkind and lack grace, these are our targets. But we are very positive, not negative, and our single ‘Harmony Inner Peace and Tenderness’ easily speaks to this, although it does attack the phonies, the losers, the I-wanna-be’s. You may think of us as Svengali and Gepetto stepping out from behind the curtain not to take our bow, but to make better art, uncompromised by anyone who bows down to the established order. Look out, we are taking no prisoners.”
Each Soul Has a Voice will be released 3 July.