Julian Shah Tayler expresses heartbreak (with a little help from Bowie alumni) in Honne/Tatemae

I never met David Bowie, but if I had, I might have thanked him first for introducing me to musicians I’d never have otherwise discovered—even before thanking him for his own music. Julian Shah-Tayler is just such an artist, and while, sadly, we will never get another genuinely new Bowie album, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to discover Julian’s latest, his new wave heartbreak album, Honne/Tatemae.

Regular readers of this blog will know Julian Shah-Tayler for his Bowie interpretations, including his song-by-song reimagining of Diamond Dogs, Hunger City, and the Aladdin Sane tribute album Forget that I’m 50. Julian has joined me on the YouTube counterpart to the blog for interviews about both albums (click on the album names to link to those interviews), and I’ve featured his music here on multiple occasions. But he’s not just a Bowie tribute artist—he’s a prolific creator of heartfelt, original music. Honne/Tatemae was released earlier this month. The songs sound like they would have found a home at an early 80s club that might have featured Duran Duran or something from Bowie off Scary Monsters, but this is an original work. That said, there is a Bowie connection—Bowie alumni bassist Carmine Rojas and pianist Mike Garson are on the album (Garson’s distinctive playing is evident on the song embedded into this post, “Lights Out”).

I looked it up: honne and tatemae describe the contrast between true feelings (honne) and the outward persona one presents to conform to social expectations (tatemae). This distinction reflects Japan’s cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict, maintaining harmony, and preventing social embarrassment, sometimes leading to the use of “white lies” to uphold societal norms. Parallels in other cultures can be found in ideas like “saving face” or the Chinese notions of Yin and Yang. Or so I’ve read.

The concept is key to understanding the album. And as with the term, which I’m guessing is unfamiliar to most of us outside Japanese culture, the album itself is not what it might seem at first. The lyrics to most of the songs are scathing. If Julian had published a book of poetry rather than an album of songs, I don’t know how I would have come away feeling. Angry? Rattled? Despondent? That’s not how I felt when I listened to the album the whole way through the first time.

OK, I had a general sense of what the album was about, and I had already heard “Malicious Intent,” which, to my ears, is the album’s most overt song. It’s obviously about betrayal and the personal effort to overcome that betrayal. Bitterness is evident. It’s a bitterness that’s infused throughout the album, but not always as obvious as in this case. Not to get back to Bowie (hey, this is a Bowie blog), but the technique reminded me of Bowie’s occasional play of assigning dark lyrics to upbeat music.

“The only way to experience joy is to also experience pain,” Julian said in a recent interview with Pasadena Weekly (he lives in Pasadena, California). He explained that following the optimism of his previous album, Elysium, Honne/Tatemae serves as its darker counterpart, a reckoning with loss, disillusionment, and the fragile hope that remains.

Julian went on to explain in that interview, “I was exposed to some bad situations,” he said in discussing a bad breakup. Yet, he described turning pain into music as “a cathartic experience. So many other artists did the same thing. Look at The Cure with Disintegration, Bob Dylan with Blood on the Tracks, and Blur with 13. You get rid of the sting by experiencing it. It’s a Buddhist thing. My way of getting through a tough situation is by writing about it.”

Bowie came up in the Pasadena Weekly interview—“Without Bowie,” said Julian, “there’s no Cure, Depeche Mode, or Suede. What Bowie did was so significant. He decided to be mainstream, but he was always artistically driven, not money driven. I’m the same way, but I have no money or fame. But what Bowie did has to do with integrity.”

At this point, I feel at a disadvantage in getting back to describing the album itself. You’d think that someone who writes a daily blog about a musician would know more about music than I actually do. I don’t have the vocabulary, and my mind goes to what something new sounds like. I mentioned Duran Duran—Julian’s voice reminds me somewhat of Simon Le Bon’s. The whole album also reminds me somewhat of Aimee Mann, not just with the bitter thematic undertones but also in some of Julian’s vocal gymnastics, pivoting from low to high sometimes within the space of the same word. And yeah, in that club playing Duran Duran and the songs of Scary Monsters, I can imagine a Til Tuesday song on the same playlist.

The bottom line: I like the album. Julian is modest about not being famous, but he’s built a following, performing across the western hemisphere for as long as I’ve been following him. I’m hoping he swings around to where I live so I can see him perform some of these songs live. Whether or not Julian Shah-Tayler reaches an even wider audience, he keeps creating, keeps performing, and keeps turning personal struggles into music that resonates. That alone makes Honne/Tatemae worth hearing.

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The album Honne/Tatemae is primarily a solo effort by Julian Shah-Tayler, who wrote, performed, produced, and mastered the entire project. He is joined by Mark Damian on drums and Ashley Ross on violins, with Nathan van Hala and Darwin Meiners as mixers. The album also features contributions from Bowie’s former bandmates, pianist Mike Garson and bassist Carmine Rojas, as well as Bauhaus and Love & Rockets bassist David J., who collaborated with Julian on select tracks.

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This is not a Mike Garson post per se, but I should note that the man has been all over the place of late. I saw him play with KillerStar in New York a few weeks ago and interviewed him along with director Rupert Wainwright for a project they did in which they adapted “Heroes” in collaboration with Ukrainian musicians to help support the war effort. He was just in Dublin for the Bowie festival there and then back with KillerStar for live performances at the legendary 100 Club. Click HERE for my interview with him and Rupert.