On More to Being a Man, Julian Forest takes indie pop rock to greed, desire and the walls we build around gender.
“This project is really the first [project] that I’ve made fully and truly open as a trans man,” the Southern California singer-songwriter says.”There’s a magic to capturing a song live to tape, the way records used to be made. Everybody in a room, playing it top to bottom, listening to each other.” More to Being a Man, out November 20, is three songs tracked at 64 Sound Los Angeles. It moves from American greed, through the nerves of new romance, to a closing argument about what manhood could be.
The title track takes on the American male archetype: marching alone, the provider complex, the stoic who never lets anyone in. Its chorus reminds us there is more to being a man than lining up behind patriarchy.
As a trans man, Forest has had top surgery but has never taken testosterone, so his relationship to passing is distinctive. “No matter how I define myself, no one will ever see me the way that I see myself,” he says. “And that’s true of everyone. Gender is performance.” And Forest is “a bit of a gender anarchist.”
He wrote More to Being a Man intending to capture the need for a place beyond masculine emotional absence. “There’s only strength in vulnerability,” he says. “It’s also the way that you build trust with other humans.”
Getting here took time. Raised by two educators and openly queer by his mid-teens, Forest still spent his early twenties keeping his distance from queer community. “I would say things like, ‘being gay isn’t the only thing about me, so I don’t need to go to Pride’,” he remembers. He didn’t recognize his transness until his early twenties, though he had been binding his chest since puberty.
Today Forest expresses his hopes for America’s relationship with trans people. He shares about building relationships with Christians and conservatives, some of whom had never knowingly met a trans person. “I didn’t have anything to hide. I think people can feel that from a person, and it disarms them,” he says. “Sometimes choosing to be a good person is choosing to be yourself.”
The two singles frame that center. “Shake You Down” opens with a recording of Donald Trump bragging about his own greed. “For so long greed was under wraps,” Forest says. “Now it seems to be such a boastful, loud and proud fact of American life. And in a sense, we’re all complicit in it.” “Beautiful Stranger,” out October 23, is what he calls the record’s “groovy glue”: a tender, cruising tune about the thrill and fear of a new love interest.
For anyone who feels boxed in, Forest’s advice is to notice. “Pay attention to the relationships that make you feel seen and the relationships that make you feel limited,” he says. “We are our environments.”
He hopes the songs keep people reflecting on the systems, families and relationships they live in, “and evaluate how they can make themselves feel more at home, and others feel more at home in turn.”
“Shake You Down” is out now. “Beautiful Stranger” arrives October 23, and “More to Being a Man” is out November 20. Forest celebrates the release live on November 21 at Archival Studios in Los Angeles. Contact: julianforestlive@gmail.com.
