Q&A: aron! Embraces the Risk of Falling in Love on ‘Too Close For Running’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SHEVON GREENE ☆
Photo by Marisa Bazan
THERE ARE PLENTY OF REASONS TO BECOME JADED ABOUT LOVE—but aron! isn’t in any rush to find one. Across tracks on his debut album Too Close For Running, out today, the 23-year-old singer-songwriter falls hard, yearns even harder and once or twice gets his heart broken, but never seems very interested in giving up on romance altogether.
In his terms, aron!’s reflection on the project is simple: “Love’s lit.” The album title represents the point he’s at right now, “down bad, full send,” meaning he’s not holding back and he’s okay with wearing his heart on his sleeve for the sake of the music.
That wholehearted approach to romance is matched by an equally warm musical world full of acoustic guitar, strings, jazz-inflected arrangements and little instrumental surprises that feel like you’re in an old-school romance set on a sunny Saturday morning in Manhattan. His classical training and education in jazz voice and film scoring play a clear role in the project, with aron! wearing plenty of hats himself as he plays bass, guitar, piano and clarinet across the record while co-producing alongside Ryan Lerman, Alex Goose, Kevin Farzad and Leon Michaels. The album also makes room for collaboration with artists like Mei Semones and dodie, whose individual musical worlds blend naturally into aron!’s own.
Luna chatted with aron! about resisting romantic cynicism, finding the line between musical space and boredom, making room for collaboration and finally letting his “little baby” of a debut album out into the world. Read below for more.
Photo by Marisa Bazan
LUNA: The first thing that stuck out to me listening to Too Close For Running was how openly romantic it is. Even when some of the tracks are about uncertainty or heartbreak, there's still not a ton of cynicism towards love itself. Has that always been a part of you, or is that something you've leaned more towards on this album?
ARON!: It's funny. The first track on the album is called "Love Is How You Lose," and you'd think that the whole album would be pretty cynical, but even that song is not cynical. I mean, it's more like if you have a friend and you want to keep the friend, then you should maybe ignore your feelings. But love's lit. Maybe the next couple albums will be cynical, but I’m not really there. Not [in] any rush to be jaded, you know (laughs).
LUNA: Your lyricism is very emotionally honest and vulnerable. Has there ever been a point where you've written a song and you wonder if you’re putting too much out there, or do you just let your feelings flow?
ARON!: No, I'm not that type of person. I'm the person who's afraid of vulnerability. But releasing an album, you have to do that. You have to be vulnerable, and that’s okay. There are two or three songs that are pretty experimental in the emotional sense, at least for me. "Clementine" is pretty out there for me—it's a challenge for me to write like that because I would never say these things in a conversation to someone. I'd never be like, "Guilt is like an antidote to never feeling enough" (laughs). It wouldn't just fall out. But it is pretty accurate to how I feel. And "I Told My Mom About You"—so simple, but it hurts in a way that only songs can.
LUNA: You mentioned "Love Is How You Lose," and I think that actually might be one of my favorites from the album. It was a good intro into the rest of the tracks, and I love that it takes that really scary idea of wanting something more with someone but knowing that you could lose the relationship you already have with them. Tell me more about that track and how it came to fruition.
ARON!: I wrote it in Beijing. It's pretty funny because it doesn’t really sound like Beijing to me, but I was in a hotel there and had a crush on someone whose friendship I also really valued. It was one of those songs where I wrote the first few words, “Happier to miss you,” because they sounded good with the melody I had. Then I sat back and thought, “What does this mean? Happier to miss you?” And it was like, “Oh, happier to miss you. Happier to say what’s been happening with you or what you did today.”
One of the biggest influences for that song is a Bob Dylan song, which also doesn't really sound like it. But there's this song called "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," and my song follows the same structure.
LUNA: The idea behind this album is romance and knowing love can hurt you and still choosing to go towards it anyway. I love how the title feels connected to that too. When did you realize that theme was tying all these songs together, or how did you decide on that theme?
ARON!: Part of it is a choice from looking at all the song titles and seeing which one sounds like the title of an album. But then another part of it is “Which one reflects the point of my life that I'm at?” It’s about me being down bad, full send.
LUNA: I was thinking about where I'd put myself if I were listening to this album for the first time, and I thought of a sunny Saturday morning in Manhattan, or somewhere in New York. Just somewhere busy, but also sitting at a park listening to it. When you picture the world that this album lives in, where would you be?
ARON!: Yours is such a cool answer. Usually, I’ll just say I’m brushing my teeth or something.
LUNA: That’s cool too.
ARON!: Yeah, but I think sunny Manhattan's a little cooler. For me, it's so hard to say. It's almost like I have no idea how people will respond to it, and to some degree, it's none of my business (laughs). I just make the things, then people respond to it, then I try not to let that affect me too much and [I] make more things.
LUNA: I really like the orange and the arrow on the cover art of the album. What's the story behind the image? How did you decide that's the visual direction you wanted to go, and how does it connect to the album?
ARON!: It comes from William Tell, the story of this guy, who, for some reason, has to shoot an apple off of his son's head. I like the fear aspect of that, or the risk that's involved, because falling in love is a risky thing. And another thing that I personally see, if you extend the cover out, is you see this baby Cupid in a diaper with a bow. I like the idea of being hunted by this inevitable falling-in-love thing. You move to New York, you're in your early 20s. It's like, "Oh, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen." And eventually you get too close for running. Also, the orange is inspired by the track “Clementine.”
LUNA: When you're working on a song, how do you know when an arrangement needs another interesting chord or instrumental layer versus when you listen to it and realize it’s good where it’s at?
ARON!: That's a great question. If I listen to what I just recorded and I'm bored, I have to figure out if the boredom is because I'm uncomfortable. Am I uncomfortable or am I bored? If I'm bored, then yeah, sure. Maybe we should add something. But if I'm uncomfortable with the amount of space that's happening, or I think, "Wow, when there's nothing else happening, I'm really listening to the lyrics and what that means, and that's uncomfortable for me," then maybe we'll keep it. It's a mix because you can overdo it, especially if you've heard the same song over and over. By the 20th listen, you're like, "Let's change it all up." You just gotta commit. And I think I'm in a good place with it now.
Photo by Meredith Truax
LUNA: I love how much personality comes through in the instrumentation, and it differs throughout some of the tracks. I noticed more prominent strings in certain tracks or more prominent guitar in others. When you're producing your own music, do you think of those details as you're writing the lyrics? When you're writing a lyric, do you think, "This would be really great to add guitar here?" How does that come to life, or does it come much later in the process?
ARON!: I love wearing different hats. When I’m writing the song, I like to separate myself into two people. There's a person who wants the music to be really good, and a person who wants the lyrics to be really good, and I need to make both of these people happy without compromising either one too much. Sometimes you have to compromise, but then you write the song and boom, done.
When you're producing it, there's a bunch of hats you have to wear, especially because there are some tracks where I'm playing bass and guitar and piano and clarinet. So I need to make all those different hats happy, but also make the producer hat that I'm wearing happy. I'm also often working with a co-producer, and then I think if their opinion is really different from mine, maybe we should figure that out. It's a process where, along the way, it's making each part as good as you can get, as if that’s the only thing you’re doing. At the end, hopefully, the goodness piles on top of each other instead of the sloppiness.
LUNA: I love how “Macramé” immediately felt like such a Mei Semones song. But at the same time, listening to it more, it’s such a perfect balance of both of your music coming together into one song. Your voices sound so great together too, but it still feels very much at home on your album. How did you find that balance of bringing in Mei's artistry but also making it your own?
ARON!: Yeah, I love that song. I had written it about her. And then I asked if she wanted to be on the song, and she agreed. So she wrote her verse, which is great. Originally she was just gonna sing on it and play guitar for the song. And then I was like, "Nah, we need to add Mei sauce." So we workshopped some crazy lines to play and weave in, which is not usually how she works. Usually, she likes the lines first as part of the song, whereas I was like, "Let's throw it into the arrangement after the fact." But it all works, and it sounds like me, and it sounds like her. I'm very happy with it.
LUNA: You also have dodie on your upcoming album. I saw on Instagram that you got to perform with her and Jeff Goldblum, which is so amazing. Was that one of those moments where you looked around and were like, "How is this my life right now?" Or have there been other pinch-me moments as you ramp up to this album coming out?
ARON!: Yes, everything is a pinch-me moment. If I pinched myself every time I had one, I would have marks all over my body. Right now it's a pinch-me moment. Somebody has listened to over half an hour of my music. That's a long time to listen to me, and then to talk in an interview—it's all crazy to me. I was expecting to play bar gigs for the rest of my life, and I was very happy with that. And being signed to Verve is pretty cool too.
LUNA: With your album coming out so soon, what's one thing that you're most excited for?
ARON!: I'm excited to see how people use this music in their lives because it's been mine for so long. It's been mine for pretty much a whole year, and now I'm releasing it into the world. It’s my little baby. So I'm excited to see if the baby can walk or if it falls, and I will love it regardless.
