Curtis Wayne Millard
Aaron Lee Tasjan named his new album after himself—three times, in fact. It goes by the excitable title Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! But in the process of finally embracing his own conflicted identity, the Americana artist actually stands for those who feel “other” just for being who they are.
Filled with a mix of cosmic-cowboy pop, Sgt. Pepper-style rock, and unabashed glam folk, it finds a former folkie embracing his psychedelic side in truly flamboyant style and exploring everything from his own conflicted sexuality to mental health and the uncertainty of life in the process. But he does it all with a lighthearted, endlessly engaging style that finds the fun in self-acceptance, and according to him, it’s been a long time coming.
“In a lot of ways, I felt kind of stuck before I made this record,” says Tasjan. “And maybe the process of writing these songs has helped to unstick me a little bit.”
Marking his fourth full-length effort, that unstuck status helped Tasjan open up further than ever before—so far that he actually made the album in secret from his record label, since they were initially uneasy about his creative heading. It’s like the project was once closeted, just like Tasjan and so many who will identify with it. But not anymore.
“I guess there are times when a record label has some buyer’s remorse and I think there was some of that for me,” he says with a laugh, explaining his team’s early misgivings. “When I got signed, I was doing solo acoustic shows and opening for John Moreland. So that’s how they saw me, and everybody was thinking that I was gonna be a sort of troubadour or, like, a Todd Snider junior.”
Curtis Wayne Millard
It was a fair assumption at the time, since Tasjan’s songwriting has always mixed folky, observational sensibility with clever lyrics and a dark, quirky wit. Even his disheveled-but-debonaire look seemed to channel Snider, who Tasjan’s careful to note he admires. But now he’s embraced his own musical identity, and from the project’s first single, it’s obvious that identity doesn’t fit a traditional mold. With its pulsating synth beat and a vocal that recalls Tom Petty, “Up All Night” finds Tasjan singing “Broke up with my boyfriend / To go out with my girlfriend,” and never quite deciding which one works best. But at this point in life, he seems to finally believe that’s OK.
“I don’t really know directly what my sexuality is,” Tasjan explains. “I just know that I find people attractive and I seem to be able to fall in love with people. Currently I’m in a relationship with a woman, and people might say I’m being a fake person somehow, but I’m just telling the truth, and that’s my number one songwriting rule.”
Truth doesn’t always have to be challenging, though, and Tasjan is perhaps one of Americana’s best at mixing the serious with the silly. The strutting “Feminine Walk,” for example, advocates for self-empowerment with a smile, as the singer-songwriter describes his own androgynous personality and, in the process, learns to take life’s punches in stride. “I rolled out to New York City / Like metropolitan Conway Twitty,” he deadpans, noting now that his time in Brooklyn after high school was a self-confidence low point.
“I always feel like if I can laugh at something right away, even if it’s a painful thing, it becomes easier for me to endure whatever aches and pains come along with it.”
To that end, the ’70s studio-rock epic of “Don’t Over Think It” reminds listeners that life is only as complicated as we make it, and he ends the record with a one-two punch of contented sarcasm on “Not That Bad” and “Got What I Wanted.” Both of which deliver the message that you might never feel “normal,” but you can still feel loved. And that’s good enough.
“For me, the end of the record is like a giant exhale,” he says. “What I want people to take away from it is just to keep going. That’s hard to do sometimes, but it’s the catalyst of so much of what we’re trying to accomplish right now: working for social justice, for equality, for better mental health, and to take better care of ourselves and be kinder to each other. We can do all that stuff, but we have to keep going.”