Aaron Lee Tasjan has covered a lot of musical territory in his career, from glam-rock (he was a member of Semi-Precious Weapons, alongside Justin Tranter, and a touring member of the New York Dolls) to rootsier singer-songwriter music (he was twice nominated for the Americana Honors & Awards). His new album, “Stellar Evolution,” covers an even wider stylistic ground, from ’80s synth-pop to balladic power-pop gorgeousness, with a fair share of rock glitter still mixed in. But Tasjan’s got a thing for contemporary electronic sounds, too — as evidenced in his enlisting Lafemmebear to remix and sing on a fresh version of the recent album’s “Nightmare,” premiering today with a Pride Month peg.
Tasjan is one of the great rising talents making records right now, and his musical gifts are so great, and his songs sometimes so subtle, that “queer” is not even something that always pops up as a qualifier in the first paragraph of everything written about him. (Sometimes, it holds for the second paragraph.) Yet, even though he’s never been shy about that aspect of his identity being part of his songwriting or public persona, he’ll allow that it may come to the fore more in “Stellar Evolution,” and not just in “Nightmare.” That song, in any case, is an all-too-apropos one for this or any moment, as it describes the anxiety that LGBTQIA people may feel in public, not feeling certain they’re going to make it to their gathering unscathed. Tasjan tells PvNew why the feelings in that song may especially resonate in his current home base of Nashville, where the political tide has turned so much against that community, and why it was important to add a trans icon’s musical and lyrical perspective to the remix.
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