PREMIERE: Tearing Up Shares “Your Flame,” Making Music That Hurts
THE MUSIC OF — Tearing Up is not “easy listening.” Instead, the rocker is creating music that’s “hard to listen to” and filled with raw emotion to push listeners to the emotional edge. With his new single, “Your Flame,” Graham Caldwell presents his newest musical identity, Tearing Up. Shedding his old moniker, Billy Moon, Caldwell has created a fresh, intriguing rock sound as Tearing Up.
“Your Flame” is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s driving rock that’s gritty and down-to-earth. The track continuously pushes and pulls the listener, all while keeping them steady with a hypnotic guitar lick.
Caldwell takes inspiration from all corners of his life. You can hear influences of modern indie groups, such as Parquet Courts, all the way to pop icons, such as Cindi Lauper. These sounds, mixed with the hardships and grief he has experienced over the past couple of years, creates the in-your-face sound of a rocker trying to conceptualize everything the world throws his way.
Caldwell shares with us a taste of his upcoming album, Heavy, due to be released on Jan. 27. Check out the premier of the music video for “Your Flame” and read on to learn more about Caldwell’s upcoming endeavors.
LUNA: You describe your newest musical project, Tearing Up, as something that came out of burnout from touring, writing numerous records, and figuring out what matters to you. Do you think that creating Tearing Up has allowed you to create a new version of yourself or a new vision for your music?
CALDWELL: Everything was written while I was still doing Billy, so it all feels more like a new version of myself, honestly. I played an open mic the other week and it felt really strange to go onstage and introduce myself as Graham — I can’t remember the last time I did that. I don’t like the idea of making the project “exclusively” about me, since so many people helped me make it, but because the songs were so personal I felt like I couldn’t really wear a mask while performing them.
I feel that if you’re going to want people to take your music seriously, you have to be willing to put your heart into it, and I hate to say this but I feel like not many people are willing to do that. I think most bands would rather pursue building some kind of aesthetic around their music than talk about their feelings in front of hundreds of people, and that’s honestly fine. I just felt like I could only write good music if I was writing from the heart.
LUNA: It seems like you enjoy writing most of your music on your own, but if you had to collaborate with someone, who would it be?
CALDWELL: I do most of my writing alone but I think the first person that I’d pick right now would be Rufus Wainwright. He’s a great songwriter and I wish I could write a good piano-based song, so I’d be really interested to see what we could cook up. Also probably Fiest. She’s an absolute goddess and a total fucking genius. So, yeah, my two dream collaborators: Rufus Wainwright and Feist.
LUNA: I honestly love that you are trying to make music that’s “hard to listen to.” I think so many people are going through similar experiences or other hardships as you and are looking for something to grasp on to. Is this your way of trying to help your fans “heal”?
CALDWELL: I would say that I think that coming out of a pandemic (or even during the pandemic) a lot of people were experiencing collective grief and it was hard for us all to process. Grief is something that you can only really understand once you go through it. It’s this nasty little bugger and you never really know what to expect from it. It can come up at any time, any place. It’s not linear, it’s not simple, it’s difficult. I think the one thing that most people would probably agree about with the grief process is that it’s a very lonely one. So I think that if I want my record to do anything, it’s to connect with anybody who’s experiencing grief and let them know they’re not alone.
LUNA: Heavy literally comes from a very heavy emotional time in your life when you were navigating grief and hardships. Do you find that you always want to make music that is emotionally driven, or do you think one day you’ll find yourself creating music that comes from a more positive place?
CALDWELL: I mean, emotions can be positive so I don’t think that emotional music is necessarily bad or necessarily negative. Right now, I’m kind of digging into some more… It's a vulnerable side of myself with the music I’m writing now. I’d say most of what I was writing before was based around some sense of anxiety, and my natural inclination was to make it aggressive and loud. Now, I’m definitely slowing down a little bit, so Heavy feels almost like a “last hurrah” of a “louder” time in my life.
LUNA: What music throughout your life did you connect with that inspired you while writing Heavy?
CALDWELL: I really got into [the band] Women when I was in university, which is a band that I think really shaped a lot of the music that’s coming out now. Parquet Courts was always a band that I felt connected to, a scrappy punk sound with great songwriting and lyricism. Chad VanGaalen did a lot of that too but with weirder, more playful kinds of sounds. I feel like you’ll really be able to hear the Protomartyr influence on a song or two — when I first heard “Pontiac 87,” it was during a time I was grieving and I felt like it captured that feeling of loss really well.
LUNA: For those that might remember you from the Billy Moon days, I feel like you had a more punk/stripped-down, DIY sound. You can still hear that influence in your newest record, but the music feels a little more grown up. Even though Billy is Dead, are there any parts of your younger self that still come through on this record and new project?
CALDWELL: I wrote [Heavy] as a Billy Moon record, so there’s still a sense of that “punk edge,” but Billy Moon was more when I was in my twenties or teenage years. I feel like the music I’m thinking about now is music that would connect more to myself as a child. So I’d say it’s still connecting to that “younger self” but maybe in a gentler, kinder kind of way, I suppose. I mean, I’m 30 now and I wrote those songs when I was 24–26, so in a way the songs are my younger self.
LUNA: Do you have any plans to tour for this record, and if so, what is your dream venue?
CALDWELL: I’ve definitely been thinking about playing music live again, although I’m not really sure I have any plans. Touring was something that was really difficult and stressful for me, and as I get older I start to ask myself if that’s how I wanna spend more of my time or base the rest of my career around. So I won’t say “yes” or “no” but “nothing as of yet.”
In terms of a dream venue, I’d say one of my favorite shows I ever played was at the Legion Hall (like a Veterans Hall) in the town where I grew up, so I don’t know, probably something like that.
LUNA: If you could be an expert in anything other than music, what would it be?
CALDWELL: I’m working on grad school applications right now talking about how neoliberalism ruined public education, but honestly this makes me think of that Treehouse of Horror Episode of The Simpsons. The one where Bart gets the evil Krusty doll and at the end of the episode the repair guy comes in and turns the doll around to find the “good and evil switch.” I wish I was an expert in finding that switch in people and switching them from “good” to “evil.” That’s what I wish I was an expert in.
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