Muse Chronicle

A hustler who’s quietly establishing himself as an artistic phenomenon that doesn’t just arrive but also somehow figures out a place in your mind and heart, tcr!’s music has always been in a league of its own. Hailing from Geneva, United States, tcfr! is a fellow Gen Xer whose music falls in a tangent of post punk and lo-fi indie rock that feels frank, uninhibited, cathartic and infectiously raw. It also feels quite mysterious, as every release feels like an era of its own, with its distinctive flow and rhyme schemes that hit different each time you hear them. Overall, the music is quite magnetic and would appeal to a ll of punk rock stans who love a taste of alternative and indie in their rock playlists. Without any further ado, let’s dive right into the release.

An unhinged yet beautifully raw moment of self-realisation, this is deeply inspired by the ensembles of the everyday life and it sounds like it.

A low-tempo track that expresses the sheer overwhelming amount of emotions you feel as you get stuck in a loop of attraction and infatuation,’ Vancouver Island’ feels raw and cinematically dreamy at the same time. Expressing the feeling of having a break in life but it not being enough, or it not solving its purpose because it doesn’t realign you to normal, this feels like the expression of an aftermath, describing a low that one hits after attaining a certain level of high. Laid-back, relaxed yet riled up with lots of emotions, this track feels innately human, as it unravels the words that remain stuck in your mind, thoughts that live rent-free in your head and decisions that were abandoned and never acted upon. I personally feel like this gives Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ vibes, but this is even more calm than that, I quite like this release.

We also had a heartfelt conversation with tcr! Here’s how the chat unfolded.

1. Your music feels emotionally messy in the most honest way possible. Have you always been comfortable writing from such a vulnerable place?

Yep, so long as I’m not writing about someone I’m currently in a relationship with (I learned that lesson). I’ve been through too many bad breakups, and I process the bad times by writing about them. The words, thoughts, feelings, raging, crying, all get written out and down so I can get it out of my head. Usually, months or years later, I’ll have some music that I want to put lyrics to, and I’ll go mine the journals for that vulnerability.

I suppose I could leave them be, but when I was a teenager, I related tremendously when artists would share the pain they’d gone through. Their music gave a voice to the torment I was going through and couldn’t explain. Those songs meant so much to me that I want to put music back out to the cosmos, maybe it will let someone else know that they’re not alone in how they feel.

2. Your music has such a distinct DIY identity. Was there ever a moment where you realised, “This is exactly how I want my music to sound”?

Not really, it’s more than these are my instruments, tools, and skillset, I have, so this is what my music sounds like.

3. Every release of yours feels like its own little world. Do you approach songs more like stories or emotional snapshots?

A good mix of both! The songs can be stories where I’m recounting something that happened from start to finish. They can also be one emotional snapshot or sometimes five in the same song. For an album, though, I do want to be sure all the tracks can live next to each other. Songs get kicked off an album when they don’t fit with the others.

4. “On Vancouver Island” feels calm but emotionally heavy at the same time. What inspired that contrast?

So, a funny story, I wrote the music maybe 15 years ago when I was with someone, and the relationship was on an upswing. Listening to the acoustic guitars in those first 20 seconds, you can kinda feel that happy-go-lucky vibe. Not overly excitable, just a calm and laid-back cool feel. I couldn’t find lyrics to connect with the music at the time, so I just shelved it. Then last year I was mining the journals for that lyrical connection, and I found a few pages that were about the breakup with that very someone. I knew they had to pair.

5. The lyrics feel brutally honest about toxic emotions and relationships. Was this song difficult to write personally?

When I was going through the breakup, that was difficult for sure. Writing the words “I don’t care if you want me back, you didn’t care when I was there” in a notebook was incredibly painful at the time because those are real thoughts I had, real feelings, real experiences. It’s torturous to feel like an afterthoughtwhen you’re with someone and then later have them want you to come home after you’ve left. It’s like people want you only when you’re not there.

6. The repetitive flow almost feels like being trapped in your own thoughts. Was that intentional while making the track?

For much of my life, I was a horrible communicator, couldn’t express myself in ways that were assertive, and didn’t have the confidence to either. I spent far too much time living in my own head. I suppose that really came through in this song. It wasn’t intentional, though.

7. The lo-fi production makes the song feel incredibly intimate. Did you always imagine it sounding this stripped back?

When I make music, I have like an idea of where I think it should go but then it takes on its own life during the recording. I had fuzzy electric bass in it for a few days, and I thought that it needed something more. But the closer I got to finishing, I kept thinking less is really more with this one. It’s gonna make it all muddy if I overdo it. And that would kill the vibe.

8. Your sound blends post-punk tension with dreamy indie textures so naturally. Which artists shaped that balance for you?

I love The Misfits, The Cure, Band of Horses, Nine Inch Nails, Lana Del Rey, Megadeth, and Portishead. I could go on and on.

9. Since this track is part of Dear Rabbits, what side of you will the rest of the EP reveal?

Lyrically, more of the same, but I did want each track to have its own identity. A straight-ahead fast punk song, a song with only acoustics, one with dreamy, razory ’80s guitars, and then a bonafide love song. In that order 🙂

10. When you revisit your older songs now, do they feel like memories or unfinished conversations with yourself?

They’re definitely memories of different eras, there’s nostalgia and all that, but writing, recording, processing — it’s how I find closure. They’re finished both in the sense that I don’t have heartbreak or any real desire to revisit the experiences.

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