Exclusive video premiere of ‘Your Flame’ by Tearing Up, taken from the upcoming album, ‘Heavy,’ out January 27th, 2023.

Following the release of his debut EP ‘Billy Is Dead’ earlier this fall, Tearing Up, the brand new project of musician Graham Caldwell, returns with the announcement of his debut LP, ‘Heavy’.

The forthcoming record is not “easy listening” — “I wanted this record to hurt,” as Graham wrote, and that motivation was largely inspired by a series of personal struggles that he experienced from late 2017 to early 2020, including the loss of his father. In those hard times, the people around him helped push him forward, and writing this record, in all honesty, gave him something to do aside from grieving. “October of 2017 to January of 2020 basically felt like one very, very, long year. But even before that, the record was always going to be called ‘Heavy,'” he wrote.

In addition to finding solace in human connection, Graham also found himself turning to music in less of a “this album saved my life”-sense, but more so in recognition of the way music can heal, but can also hurt. Heavy came from his personal place of pain and loss, and it became his version of hard, but necessary truth-telling via making art.

“Billy Bragg’s ‘Sexuality,’ Dixie Chicks ‘Wide Open Spaces,’ Andy Shauf’s ‘My Dear Helen,’ Cindy Lauper’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Carey’… Even writing this list makes me misty. At the real root of it, I think I just wanted to write music that could make someone cry. Just something that would make a person feel something, realize something, or remember something they thought they’d forgotten. I hope I’ve done that with this record.”

Today, Graham introduces Heavy with its first single, ‘Your Flame.’

Speaking on the track, he wrote: “This is the oldest song on the record. We recorded it in February of 2018, I think I had written it in late 2016, maybe 2017. Honestly, I can’t even remember now. There are people that we call during times of crisis because we know they’re going to say the thing we need to hear, but can’t quite say to ourselves. Never judging, always able to listen, and for some reason, never refuses to pick up. That thing that you need to hear, is never really ‘the answer’ to the problem. It’s pretty much always: ‘you already know the answer,’ or ‘you are capable of handling this,’ or ‘I believe in you.’ They always seem fake when you say them to yourself, but in the times when I was the lowest, hearing them from that person made me really believe they were true. This song is for my 77-year-old step-dad, Rob Robson.”

Tearing Up Instagram / Twitter / Tik Tok / SoundCloud / YouTube