Why Groovance Thinks Control Is Mostly an Illusion
Punk Head: You describe "Loosen Up" as permission rather than escapism. What exactly stops people from giving themselves that permission in the first place?
Groovance: Fear that the holding-on is what's keeping it all upright. We tell ourselves a quiet story: if I stop gripping, it collapses. So we don't loosen, not because we love the tension, but because we're scared of what's underneath it. And the thing nobody tells you is that the control was mostly an illusion anyway. The structure was holding itself up. You were just standing next to it, exhausted, taking the credit and the stress.
You can put Loosen Up on at a party and it just works; a groove, warm, shoulders down, done. That's real, and I'd never talk anyone out of enjoying it that way. But it sits as the second of five steps on the EP, and there it gets more specific. Still Becomin' maps a journey - five tracks, five steps of becoming - and Loosen Up is the moment right after the spark, where you have to release control before you can go any further. On its own it's a good time. Inside the arc, it's the door you have to walk through.
Punk Head: At what point does a track stop telling you to loosen up and start actually making you do it?
Groovance: The moment your body answers before your brain does. You can write "let go" in a lyric all day, it's just a sign on a wall. The track only works when the groove gets to your shoulders before the words get to your head. That's why it's built dense and full, the motion never letting up: so it skips the negotiation and goes straight to the part of you that moves without asking permission.
That's also why it earns its place as a step and not just a single. Each moment on the EP is designed to make you feel the thing rather than be told it. Loosen Up doesn't lecture you about releasing control; it loosens you, physically, and lets you reach the conclusion on your own. The mind's always the last to catch up. Honestly, that's the whole trick of the record: get there through the body first.
Punk Head: What does "holding it together" sound like in the music you were making before this?
Groovance: Control sounds like fear, though not the way people expect. Loosen Up is a dense track. It's full, there's a lot moving, very little empty space. And that's the thing I'd had backwards. I used to think holding it together meant cramming everything in, and letting go meant stripping it to nothing. Too easy. You can be full and still be loose. The difference isn't how much is in the room, it's whether everything in the room is relaxed. This song is busy, but nothing in it is gripping. It's a crowded room where everyone's comfortable, instead of one where everyone's holding their breath.
That distinction is the whole reason the songs became steps. Each one is full in its own way - the opener breathes and leaves space, this one fills the room and stays easy, the slow one fills it with harmony, the closer fills it with build. Same fullness, five different temperatures. Loosen Up is the step where you learn that ease isn't emptiness, and you feel that better once you know where it sits in the climb.
Punk Head: When you say "not performing," what does performance look like in your creative process specifically — vocals, arrangement, even decision-making?
Groovance: It's not about how much work goes into a track, it's about who the work is for. There's a lot of work across these five songs, each pulling a different direction: one builds from almost nothing, one keeps a wall of sound relaxed, one does its labour in the harmony, one is pure kinetic push, one is a long architectural build that has to earn its release. Different effort, different aim, but each pointed at the song, not at the listener.
Performing is the opposite: misdirected effort. A choice made for the imaginary critic instead of the song; the clever move that's really just waving at whoever might be listening for cleverness. The tell isn't complexity or simplicity. The richest, most intricate track on the record is also one of the most honest; a lazy four-chord loop can be a total performance. The tell is whether the work points at the song or points at you, asking to be admired. Keeping a personality out of the front of Groovance is part of that for me, not for mystery, just because the music carries it better than I could. With no image to feed, the only question left is whether a choice serves the step it's standing in.
Punk Head: The EP's throughline asks "Where are you in your becoming?" With "Loosen Up" specifically, are you describing a moment you have already lived, or one you still have to practice returning to?
Groovance: One I have to practice returning to. I didn't write it from some serene place of having figured it out; I wrote it from wanting it. It's less a postcard from somewhere I live and more a door I keep having to find again. Some days I walk straight through. Other days I stand there gripping the handle, telling myself I'll loosen up once this one last thing is handled, and there's always one last thing.
That's the answer to the whole EP, really. Still Becomin' is five steps, but it isn't a staircase you climb once and you're done. You don't graduate from loosening up. You don't finish becoming. That's exactly why the song works two ways at once; as a single it's a moment, a great Friday night; as step two of the record it's a moment you return to, because the whole thing is built on the idea that there's no finish line, only the becoming, again and again.
