Tofusmell - All My Time [CD]

"You cannot plan anything. You can't expect anything good or bad. Everything is just going to continue to be however it will be." This is the way musician Rae Chen encapsulates his debut album as Tofusmell, All My Time. At times reserved and gracefully restrained, and other times overflowing and agitated, All My Time showcases Rae's signature precision in vulnerable, clear-eyed songwriting, with a larger, lusher, and more fleshed-out scale of production than we've seen from him before. Chen poetically distills the uncomfortable complications of learning to release expectation from outcome, and in turn live contentedly in life's constant, confusing uncertainty. It's less an apathetic resignation than a hopeful insistence that impermanence, and the toiling mystery it brings, is it's own kind of steady salve. Following the release of his 2023 EP Humor, Chen spent a few months intermittently touring with Leith Ross before daring to move away from his home state of Florida to Winnipeg, Canada. Once there, he finished writing the songs that would come to make up All My Time. While Chen has primarily worked solo in the past - writing, producing, and recording his music himself - he brought in new collaborators to help build All My Time. Six of the songs were co-produced and recorded with Keiran Placatka in Winnipeg. For the two of them, the emotional atmosphere conjured by the songs is key, as evidenced in "Pilot Fish": Chen's hushed vocals and shuffling guitar interplay seamlessly with swirling electronic chimes and warm, ambling base, swelling and receding like a gentle tide.Interspersed with Placatka's contributions are four songs produced and recorded with Paul Larson in Los Angeles, each with an energetic and dynamic live-band sound inspired by folk-rock of the early aughts. Tracks like "Voice Cracks" and "Force the Sun West!" incorporate reeling, fuzzed electric guitar and punchy drums bolstered by darker-toned production. The album is rounded out with "Luck", produced by Chen himself, and "Overspender", produced with Jack Hallenbeck in Los Angeles and reminiscent of the whisper-close folk stylings of Sufjan Stevens and Nick Drake. Despite the myriad hands involved in the overall production, All My Time remains cohesive, held together with Chen's earnest and enveloping story-telling.