Bells Larsen - Good Grief

Bells Larsen started writing “Good Grief” five years ago, during what would prove to be the start of a hugely transitional time in their life. In the 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 their 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.”  

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.” After five years and twelve original pieces of music (including two audio clips from the tenth grade that feature Larsen and their friends--including their first love--singing a Sufjan Stevens song around a campfire), Larsen had the makings for an album.  

Prior to recording “Good Grief”, Larsen wrote, performed, and recorded their songs as a solo artist. The process of arrangement in their early work was singular and unmediated; Larsen understood a song to be complete once they had written it down. Larsen’s 2017 self-titled LP was recorded live-off-the-floor when they were only eighteen, and these recordings capture the songs exactly as they were written: simple and raw. This time around, Larsen worked with fellow musician Graham Ereaux (Devarrow) to use the studio as a means to take Larsen’s songs in their earliest forms and mould them into something bigger. Larsen, Ereaux, and multi-instrumentalist Evan Matthews (Devarrow) all gathered in Ereaux’s cozy Nova Scotia home  in the winter of 2021 to record. During the three-week recording period, Larsen spent each day diving into the arrangements, balancing playfulness and  a complete trust in their collaborators. “There is a fundamental risk that an artist takes when they choose to share work that is deeply personal to them, even if it’s between artists,” Larsen says. “In doing so, they let go of their own stories and allow them to become something that exists beyond themselves.” Larsen notes that their music is autobiographical, queer, and a little melancholic in its essence. “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. At the same time though, they treated the music and the stories with delicacy and care.” Other contributors who shaped the ethos of “Good Grief” include musicians Georgia Harmer and Leith Ross, mixing engineer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen), and mastering engineer Harris Newman (Silver Mt. Zion, Wolf Parade). With the help of these artists, Larsen wrote a record that is vulnerable, cathartic, and hopeful.  

 The soundscapes on “Good Grief” range from lo-fi indie classics, to intimate, stripped-down folk songs that feature double-tracked vocals and dreamy finger-picking. The textures are knit together seamlessly, thanks to Larsen’s ability to write earworms that are both catchy and introspective, and to Ereaux’s knack for creating a vibe and sticking with it. “Graham is an incredible songwriter,” says Larsen. “He knew how to arrange the songs so that they fit with one another, yet all could be pulled apart to be distinct.” Tunes like “Teenage Love” and “People Who Mean So Much To Me'' conjure vivid landscapes of memory through Larsen’s precise and perceptive lyricism, which is conversational and inviting, as well as intimate and candid. Songs like “Double Aquarius'', “Say Something”, and “Atlantic Love” are lush, upbeat, and groovy with their use of electronics and harmony. In their sonic variety, the songs on the album all flow from one to the next with ease, consistently highlighting the universal within with the specific. 

“Good Grief” is a record about love, loss, growing up, growing old, moving on, and moving forward. This music is for anyone who has experienced a loss in their lives, whether that be figurative or literal in nature, and it’s Larsen’s sincerest hope that its contents will also inspire listeners to, similarly, take their grief and make it good.