There’s something achingly beautiful about Tiberius b’s work that pulls me even closer with every listen. The London-by-way-of-Canada singer/songwriter conjures everything from Portishead to Robyn. I love how much command they have on the pop songbook, as they incorporate indie folk and trip-hop to make an absurdly unique sonic palette that is fully singular. I love Tiberius b’s new EP, DIN, which quakes across six tracks. Whether they are writing through grief, trans beauty or the chaos of romance, I’m entranced by the language, the arrangements and the grandeur.
Not only do Tiberius b’s songs on DIN feel timeless, but the EP itself is one of the best short records of 2023 so far. It’s an earworm that sinks into you deep, and I can’t wait to continue diving in and exploring each chapter over and over for a long, long time. “HHB” is one of my favorite pop songs of the year so far, and there’s an alchemy across the album that is brimming with potential, joy, humanity and queer, anthemic articulations. Tiberius b was kind enough to sit down with Paste and give us the background details on all six songs that make up DIN, which arrives in full on June 30 via Zelig Music.
“Delicate People”
“Delicate People” was written after finding out my friend died in a sudden accident in 2020. I was told in a serendipitous way the day before going to my grandma’s funeral, and it was an overwhelming time of grief not only in these clear personal ways but globally also. I looked up to this person, and they gave me a lot of grounding support, artistically, when I didn’t know many people in London and was starting from scratch. Over time, I coincidentally became entwined with their community after they passed, and I share a lot of life with them now even though they are gone.
“Jetski”
“Jetski” is about the grotesque and gorgeous elements that make up falling in love in an instant, revealing a fantastic world existing within a mundane one. There’s something about this which feels laced with deluded fantasy. I don’t know if I believe that it’s possible to fall in love at first sight, but that’s what it felt like. And if it felt like that, what does it really mean? The hook is a kind of facetious joke acknowledging this: How could there be any more ways to possibly articulate that experience—when there exists so much music about this subject? While I was recording it in my flat on Deptford High Street, the alarm bell of the bank opposite [my place] was going off so I recorded it into the song, and it was perfectly in time and key. I ascribed this sound to anchor the idea of DIN as it pertained to the whole group of songs. It was the first one that was written for the project.
“Twofer”
“Twofer” is me confronting the limitations I experience with nonbinary identification as it relates to my physical being. This can manifest as rejection of the self, but I used the projection of being rejected by someone else who presented similarly to expand on that feeling musically. You might find some references to GNC people whose ideas and work I’ve engaged with over the years in the lyrics.
“HHB”
“HHB” is an homage to trans beauty, and the patience and humility that is required to navigate relationships with people who have been marred by environmental factors outside of our control. I was excited when Hamish came to me with the idea of using pigeons as an emblem for the project, because this song mentions them in the opening lyrics “Don’t shoot the messenger / It’s a little dirty dove / Wielding letters of LOVE / An olive branch in tow.” Doves and pigeons are the same! We just classify them so differently in our culture because of things that happened in history that we aren’t even consciously aware of.
“Cornerstone”
“Cornerstone” leans into chaos and explores the boundaries of traditional relationship structures. I think this song is a good example of how I went in a way more abstract direction lyrically on this project than the last one. I think that’s partly to do with wanting to shroud facts around what these songs are about and partly to do with returning to a more imaginative wording that I used to engage with more when I started writing as a teenager. I wrote it after watching the Oasis documentary, lol.
“Wasted”
“Wasted” is about the dynamics of being betrayed, and trying to understand the spectrum of morality that can be expressed through people’s actions. I started writing it in a really blissful moment while staying at my dad’s place on Cortes Island where I grew up, and then it ended up taking a turn while I was in LA some weeks later where I finished writing it on the plane home. Tonally, you can hear those worlds of pain and pleasure colliding within the song. I made it with Chris Baio, who was generous in how he prepared for our meeting, having looked up things I was influenced by and coming up with a loose “plan.” I hadn’t done sessions with people I didn’t know before and it helped to feel seen and safe. We focused on my love of this The The record called Dusk and how perverse and intense his voice sounds.
