tofusmell

Rae Chen has made introspective and poetic indie-folk as tofusmell since 2021, and returns with his debut album All My Time, a confident showcase of his vulnerable, clear-eyed songwriting, with lusher and more fleshed-out production than we’ve seen from him before. Here, Chen poetically distills the uncomfortable complications of learning to release expectation from outcome, and in turn live contentedly in life’s constant, confusing uncertainty. Following the release of his 2023 EP Humor, Chen spent a few months intermittently touring before moving 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, and began recording with a collection of new collaborators: Keiran Placatka, Paul Larson, and Jack Hallenbeck. Held together with Chen’s earnest and enveloping story-telling, All My Time moves seamlessly between an energetic and dynamic live-band sound inspired by folk-rock of the early aughts, and whisper-close folk stylings of Sufjan Stevens and Nick Drake that Chen has become well known for. Through a ping-pong of dueling laments on the inconsequentiality of one's place in the world, and a desire to seize control of times uncontrollable will, Chen discovers a solemn truth about what it means to be young and alive. There is no use in waiting to arrive at a moment of pure and perfect growth: the arrival is in the journey itself.