BELLS LARSEN’S DEBUT ALBUM, GOOD GRIEF, OUT SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “DOUBLE AQUARIUS” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DOUBLE AQUARIUS” HERE
PRE-SAVE GOOD GRIEF HERE
Photo Credit : Monse Muro // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Bells Larsen (they/he/il) started writing their debut album, Good Grief, at the age of nineteen, during what would prove to be the start of a hugely transitional time in their life. In the five years since these songs began to take shape, Larsen has moved across the country, studied philosophy at a small liberal arts college, dropped out, and then moved across the country again. Larsen’s life was also put on pause after the sudden death of their first love. Since this person’s passing, Larsen has been writing songs that attempt to express this person’s spirit and create a tangible container for their memory. “This loss left so many people with so many unanswered questions, myself included,” Larsen admits. “I haven’t always arrived at answers to these questions, but songwriting has provided me with a way to at least ask.”
Today, Larsen shares the first single from the album, “Double Aquarius”, a song written in their college dorm room. “I love this song because it was born during one of the darker periods of my life, but is sonically quite bouncy and upbeat,” says Larsen. “I was listening to a lot of Soccer Mommy, Courtney Barnett, and Frankie Cosmos at the time, so I had developed an affinity for tongue-in-cheek lyrics melded with memorable hooks. This song is about blaming your blues on astrology.”
“Contrary to what Double Aquarius might imply, I’m not that big into astrology,” adds Larsen when reflecting on the music video. “I do know, however, that Aquarians tend to be spacey. I thought it might be fun to run with the astrology theme and have the video take place in space. Director Jack Harrison’s retro visual aesthetic lent itself really well to the video and we had a ton of fun playing around with the special effects (like me floating!). When I’m feeling off, I tend to ask myself if there’s something going on with me or if there’s just something in the stars. This video splits the difference and shows that it can be a bit of both.”
WATCH / SHARE “DOUBLE AQUARIUS” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DOUBLE AQUARIUS” HERE
“Double Aquarius” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT GOOD GRIEF
While demoing this collection of songs at an artist residency in Banff, it dawned on Larsen that the experience of loss exists outside of losing someone; we mourn places and memories, too. “The definition of the word “loss” changes all the time for me,” says Larsen. “What does it mean to have truly lost someone? Something? If I lose something, how do I know for certain that I’ve lost it for good? As I reflected on the experience of losing my first love, I wrote songs that allowed me to explore these trains of thought.” The result was a record that bridges the gaps between I, you, and we to narrate an intentional mediation on what it means to experience grief as young queer person.
The first voice we hear on Larsen’s album is that of their first love; “Ready?” she asks. As if to answer her, Good Grief then begins with an audio recording from 2013 of Larsen and their high school friends singing Sufjan Stevens’ song "The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!" around a campfire. “Loss is a wasp’s sting,” says Larsen. “This Sufjan song has been dear to me for a long time, but I understood it very differently after my first love passed away.”
When Larsen was recording Good Grief, they sought out old voice memos to use as interludes in between songs. “I wanted to make the music sound more human,” Larsen admits. “Eventually, I found the campfire recording from the tenth grade, and I was immediately struck by the fact that the most prominent voice is that of my first love.” Larsen edited the clip down to about thirty seconds in order to highlight several lines in the song which are, to them, the most poignant with regards to the theme of loss. Larsen shares: “When the record starts and my ex says ‘ready?’, part of me knows that she’s asking my friends and I if we were ready to sing around that fire all those years ago, but there’s also a part of me that feels like – in some way – she’s asking grown-up-me if I’m ‘ready’ to share my songs about grief now.”
The album quickly unfurls like a bildungsroman, touching on love, loss, growing up, growing old, moving on, and moving forward. Songs like “Teenage Love” and “Sweater Weather'' conjure vivid landscapes of memory through Larsen’s lyricism, which is conversational and inviting, while being intimate and candid. Community and friendship are central to the song “People Who Mean So Much To Me”, which features vocals from Larsen’s close friend and fellow musician, Leith Ross. Larsen explains: “this song is composed of vignettes about three distinct relationships that I had fostered throughout the span of a single year. I wrote it during the pandemic, while I was really missing community.” To Larsen, the song is a reminder to them that, even when they’re feeling lonely and isolated, they will continue to cross paths with wonderful people and build meaningful relationships.
PRE-SAVE GOOD GRIEF HERE
Larsen co-produced the record with fellow musician Graham Ereaux who performs under the name Devarrow. Good Grief was recorded at Ereaux’s studio in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, where Larsen and Ereaux were joined by multi-instrumentalist Evan Matthews. “There was such an advantage to bringing my songs to two people who are not intimately connected to my experiences. Neither Evan nor Graham listened to my songs as artifacts of grief, but rather, they heard them as compositional elements.” With the record in hand, Larsen enlisted Howard Bilerman (Leonard Cohen, Arcade Fire) to mix the record, back home in Montreal.
The five years that it took to write Good Grief encompass so many aspects of Larsen’s life, capturing a coming-of-age story and documenting an ongoing process – of an artist and of a human being – as they try to navigate the terrain of their existence and that of those around them. It’s an experience of their loss but also honours the person that was lost to them. The record closes with a reprise of the “Wasps” audio recording, marrying the past and present as the old voice memo slowly fades into a newer one. Present-day Larsen sings, “I can tell you I love her each day”: a testament to the fact that their grief is – finally – good.
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GOOD GRIEF TRACKLIST
01 Wasps
02 Tongue Tied
03 Double Aquarius
04 Teenage Love
05 Sweater Weather
06 Say Something
07 Atlantic Love, A Long Distant Wave (ft. Devarrow)
08 The Geography Of Leaving
09 Cara
10 Ribcage
11 People Who Mean So Much To Me
12 Wasps (Reprise)
TOUR DATES
June 27 - Toronto, ON - The Drake Underground | School Night (TO)
June 30 - Toronto, ON - Toronto International Jazz Festival w/ Hua Li, Wild Black, Lydia Persaud (Next Door Records Showcase)