A broad-spectrum listening experience packed with vibrant, timeless songs.
Aaron Lee Tasjan sought counsel from his longstanding friend and mentor, the late great Todd Snider, to help loosen the shackles of imposter syndrome that were tying him down after his 2024 album, Stellar Evolution. Under Snider’s tutelage, Tasjan found his true path and located the “emotional rock” within each of his new songs. The resulting Get Over It, Underdog, his seventh studio album, is a broad-spectrum listening experience full of vibrant, timeless songs whose narrators include a well-shuffled pack of underdogs. Between them, they deliver the strongest hand Tasjan has played to date.
In a recent interview with AUK’s Martin Johnson here, Tasjan said that he felt a mixture of catharsis and hope for the future when he released Science Friction, the album’s lead-off track, into the world. This song asks what Christopher Columbus and crew would make of post-truth and alternative facts: “Could they imagine living in a day/ Where well-known facts are argued away?” It also calls out man’s controlling instincts and the self-serving wealthy. Clown Show is another dip in the reflecting pool of current affairs, citing an unnamed all-hailed “needy nincompoop”, “a new ship of fools” and “Company men with artificial intelligence”. Welcome to ALT’s country. What could possibly go wrong?
The highly infectious groove of Lost & Alone belies a dark message of an addict unseen by society but harassed by the police. The dream pop of Lydia’s Boots, laced with pedal steel, was inspired by the pair of silver Betsy Johnson cowboy boots worn by singer-songwriter Lydia Loveless when Tasjan saw her perform at The Blue Room in Nashville. He has previous form in the footwear department, having been one of the co-writers of Yola’s Diamond Studded Shoes, which was nominated for the 2022 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song. The lyrics of the glam rocker Twilight Zone Blues might be mistaken for a monologue from the 45th President of the United States when he first noticed the red button on the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk back in 2016. This song was actually inspired by the Button Button episode of an American science fiction television series, The Twilight Zone, whose Pandora’s Box dilemma issued a chilling reminder that our choices can have unintended consequences. Side one, for those listening on vinyl, is rounded off by Ballad of an East Canton Lowlife, whose lyrics are informed by Tasjan’s teenage experiences in the Buckeye State. This song also gives a nod to his New York Dolls days.
There is a Beatlesque quality to the second side of Get Over It, Underdog. No One’s Gonna Know, according to Tasjan’s TikTok, is “one for those late nights where you can’t sleep and your brain just keeps replaying all your past mistakes and regrets on repeat.” Next up, the sleazy psychedelia of Shiver is, as revealed on his social media, an introduction to “the most powerful and fascinating dancer I’ve ever met”. With a Brad Jones string arrangement evoking Eleanor Rigby and its I’m Only Sleeping groove, Can She Get An Amen comes on like a flashback from a pocket-money purchase made by this reviewer of the Fab Four’s Revolver album back in 1966.
Listeners to The Real should ensure that their air guitars are tuned up in preparation for Audley Freed’s solo. This song, co-written with Snider, is a celebration of being oneself; its second verse is dedicated to O’Shae Sibley, a gay Black dancer who died after being attacked whilst voguing to a Beyoncé song at a petrol station in Brooklyn in 2024. Finally, The Dream Comes True is a piano ballad worthy of a sea of waving smartphone flashlights, which brings proceedings to an anthemic close.
Fellow singer-songwriter and author of Saved By A Song Mary Gauthier described Tasjan, with whom she co-wrote the title track of her forthcoming Reckoning album, as “a true troubadour”. ALT is not afraid to challenge listeners with the truth, even though this recently resulted in several audience members walking out of his show in Galveston, Texas, as he performed his 2024 song I Love America Better Than You. One suspects that with his newfound confidence, Tasjan is himself an underdog who’ll definitely get over it.
