Review: Aaron Lee Tasjan burns bright through the ether with ‘Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’

I tell this story a lot: there’s a photo floating around somewhere of me and my sister smeared in firebird red lipstick and holding a sign with “don’t hate us because we’re beautiful” scrawled in bubble letters. I don’t recall anything about that particular moment, or what led up to it, but it perfectly captures everything about my personality: I’m goofy and hella awkward, and I like makeup. In a world that often still demonizes femininity, an album like Aaron Lee Tasjan‘s Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! makes me feel seen; pressed inside its garish pages are heart-tangled lyrics about mental health and what it means to be fearlessly queer. There’s a cosmic electricity coursing throughout its skeleton, too, like something from another planet has crashed into the atmosphere.

Tasjan whips the senses with leather-bound morsels — “every corner you cut / goes straight to the bone” from the sticky “Don’t Overthink It” among his most incisive — and it’s never more than you can take. His voice impresses such wisdom in gentle circles, as if caressing away your troubles for the album’s concrete runtime, and invites you to love yourself harder. There’s always a twinkle in his eye, whether he’s speaking on fiercely living in the face of vitriol (“Sunday Women”), sashaying between lovers in the midnight hours (the glitchy, hypnotic “Up All Night” would be a bonafide pop smash in a just world), or clawing tooth and nail out of depression (“Now You Know,” a psychedelic essential). The musician shakes down life’s most colorful, and daringly queer, stories — the queer journey is entirely unique, as navigating toxic masculinity can be terribly agonizing and draining on the body.

There’s an ounce of suffering bubbling throughout the record, as well. A song like “Feminine Walk,” as high-glam and self-assured as it is, wouldn’t work if not for the emotional backing Tasjan uses as a springboard to reclaim his identity and the narrative. “I rolled out of New York City / Like metropolitan Conway Twitty / Got my smoker’s cough and a Brooklyn loft / Used a pseudonym, had a crush on him,” he sings, the arrangement awash in glittering electric guitar and percussion. He swaggers out to centerstage, bravely declaring he’s more than worthy to take up as much space as he needs.

Aaron Lee Tasjan is here. (Yes, he’s queer). And he’s a musical poet.

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