ALBUM REVIEW: Aaron Lee Tasjan Dares Us to Follow His ‘Stellar Evolution’
Rachel Cholst
Posted On April 11, 2024
It’s not safe to expect more of the same from an artist as curious and driven as Aaron Lee Tasjan. Tasjan’s new album, Stellar Evolution, tracks his growth as a person and an artist. Tasjan may be known to No Depression readers as a piercing singer-songwriter, but he cut his teeth in the music world with the glam rock band Semi Precious Weapons. While Tasjan began to scratch that pop itch with his previous album, 2021’s Tasjan Tasjan Tasjan! (ND story), he has fully bridged the gap between his pop and roots passions on Stellar Evolution. Here we can feel Tasjan fully reveling in all of his facets — and have no choice but to be immersed in it.
Aaron Lee Tasjan (photo by Shervin Lainez)
This transformation kicks off from the first distorted synth chords of the album: “Alien Space Queen” is a whimsical pop song that revels in transfemininity. Tasjan builds an out-this-world groove with layer upon layer of electronic samples, leading to a cheery romp that celebrates the radical potential of acceptance. This song is counterbalanced by “Nightmare,” firmly rooted in the frightening realities of venturing out of the house while expressing gender non-conformity.
According to Tasjan, Stellar Evolution was inspired in large part by the recent waves of virulent anti-trans legislation — particularly the “drag ban” in Nashville, where Tasjan makes his home. While few of these laws will hold up in court (indeed, Nashville’s ban has already been struck down), the message is clear: the arm of the state can and will repress LGBTQ+ rights until someone intervenes. Perhaps this prompted another theme woven throughout Stellar Evolution, a song cycle that examines Tasjan’s own coming-out process.
Tasjan approaches the subject with his signature earnestness and sly wit. “Dylan Shades” is a remarkable ballad dedicated to young queer love and navigating the shame that society has imposed upon it. This seriousness is counterbalanced by “The Horror of It All,” an ironically heavy pop song that compares puberty and its attendant lust to turning into a werewolf. The album closer, “Young” is a loving message to the past.
The pop maximalism and lyrical earnestness create a disorienting divide that makes such heady ideas accessible. The ironic country music touches to “I Love America Better Than You” are perhaps the best example of this dichotomy: Tasjan invokes radical politics, queer theory, and hot dogs into a banger that throws patriotism back into the face of people who equate those values with fascism.
Nothing on Stellar Evolution works without Tasjan’s inherent sweetness. While he speaks out against many injustices here, there is also a hope and earnestness that we will all be free — and sometimes, as Tasjan exhorts us in “Pants,” that means “wear whatever you want.” In other words, individual resistance can lead to something far greater than ourselves.
Aaron Lee Tasjan’s Stellar Evolution is out April 12 via Blue Élan.
