Bells Larsen’s Good Grief touches on a time when everything feels like it’s moving too fast, and you just want to hold on a minute longer before everything changes.
If you are lucky (and I really hope you are) you will listen to a record and think, “was this made specifically for me?”
After posting a photo of a Sufjan Stevens mug on my Instagram, pal + Dominionated co-founder, Mackenzie Cameron encouraged me to listen to Bells Larsen’s Good Grief. The album welcomed me with a brief lo-fi cover of Stevens’ “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!” (Larsen revisits the song to close the album as well). By track three, “Double Aquarius,” Larsen holds up a mirror to me and sings: “No one likes it when I control the aux cord but I don’t know what’s wrong with dancing to Sufjan at a party. If I’m killing the mood, I am sorry.”
So maybe you’re not a Sufjan Stevens superfan, but Good Grief can be for you too. Written over five years, Good Grief, a soft pop-rock and sometimes folky album, touches on so many familiar moments and emotions that take place when you leave behind your teens and enter your twenties. It’s a time when everything in your life feels like it’s moving too fast, and you just want to hold on for a minute longer before everything (and everybody) changes. Cityscapes, the ocean, the glint of love, and important people from various points in Larsen’s life all whiz by. “Do you also find it scary how quickly time passes by?” Larsen asks on “The Geography of Leaving.”
Good Grief also touches on grief as Larsen must reconcile with the sudden death of their first love. Partially because of how tender Larsen’s singing voice is and partially because of this loss, the record aches in a way that will make you reach for your favourite blanket in hopes that it will dull the pain just a little bit.
On “Teenage Love,” Larsen sings of their loss and admits something. This admission is about their former love, but maybe it’s not because it’s something that you feel to be true when listening to Good Grief: “most of my songs are for you.”
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