We spoke with the local singer-songwriter about his transition, his album Blurring Time, the media attention around his cancelled U.S. tour and more.
This article was originally published in Cult MTL.
Change can be scary, but change can also be transformational. Bells Larsen knows that feeling intimately.
His latest album, Blurring Time, dropped on April 25 via Royal Mountain, earning a wave of praise and newfound attention for the Montreal-via-Toronto singer-songwriter. Shaped by Larsen’s gender transition, Blurring Time features dual vocals from Larsen recorded both pre and post-transition. In June, the album topped Earshot’s top 200 national campus and community radio chart, and was longlisted for this year’s Polaris Music Prize.
We spoke with Larsen on Zoom to discuss his whirlwind 2025 — from the album’s release to making headlines after being unable to apply for a U.S. work visa.
Larsen says he’s “really touched” by how the album has been received so far, despite many of its songs being several years old. “There can be a tendency to outgrow one’s own art,” he admits.
“From the time of writing until the time that a work is actually out, I know a lot of folks who are like, ‘Ugh, I just want to move on to the next thing.’ But a) I really don’t feel that way, and b) I’m just really touched that the songs are resonating with people. Even though they were written four years ago, people are still finding a home within them.”
The album’s title track, “Blurring Time,” was the first song Larsen wrote for the project. The concepts of ontology and nonlinear timelines, as well as our existence within space and time, stuck with him — especially as he’d been writing the album mid-pandemic.
“It’s very strange, confusing and kind of isolating as a queer person to look at those around me, notably cishet people, and use their life milestones as a yardstick with which to measure what I’m up to,” he says. “Looking at what my friends are achieving with their jobs or houses or lives, and being like, ‘I’m figuring out how to shave.’”
Though it’s been a slow unravelling, Larsen says he’s identified with every letter of the LGBTQ acronym at different points in life. “I didn’t necessarily see my own flavour of queerness or transness reflected in media in a way where I was like ‘Oh my god, that’s me,’” he adds.
Originally from Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, Larsen moved to Montreal in August 2019. Depending on the song, Blurring Time is performed in both official languages — he’s fluently bilingual, having studied in French immersion growing up and learned to read in French before English. He jokes that, upon moving here, he didn’t have any dietary restrictions and was “essentially giving girl” before becoming a transgender man and swearing off various kinds of meat. Montreal’s creative, queer-friendly vibe would shape his songwriting, too.
“One of my best friends lived in Montreal for her undergrad and her master’s, and she moved back to Toronto recently,” he tells us. “We went to high school together, and we often talk about the differences between Toronto and Montreal. She often says that Toronto, for her, feels like a very people-focused place. You go to Toronto for the relationships you have or the friendships that you’ve cultivated in the past.
“Montreal, she says, is a very sensorial place. We’ve got really good food. So much greenery. Spiral staircases. It’s a very beautiful place. Montreal has inspired my songwriting more, lyrically. I just want to name-drop neighbourhoods and corners and what I’m seeing.”
Blurring Time began life in 2021 after attending an online songwriting class called School of Song with Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek. Larsen opened for Meek at the Fairmount Theatre last year in a full-circle moment.
Meek prompted his students to try emulating their favourite singer-songwriter, whether lyrically or structurally. “I borrowed a page from Elliott Smith’s book, and essentially copied the exact chord progression from ‘Say Yes’,” he says. “That’s ‘Blurring Time’. The song has the same chords.
“It was March 2021. I hadn’t cut all my hair off yet. I wasn’t on testosterone. I was waiting to hear back about the date regarding my top surgery. Spending so much time alone in one’s apartment with mirrors, you’re thinking about who you are. We all had so much time to sit with ourselves. I essentially took to this chord progression to ask myself, ‘Okay, I can very clearly articulate the fact that I am not a woman, but I’m not really sure who I am, what I am, what I want.’ That was the jumping off point for the album. With every song that comes after, I’m tackling a different question with regards to who I am.”
Before considering the duet-type dynamic between his former and current selves, Larsen’s goal in writing Blurring Time was to figure out who he was. By the time he finished, his self-identity became more concrete. He decided in late 2021 to blend those two vocal parts.
Knowing he wanted to start taking testosterone and assuming the wait time for treatment would be lengthy, Larsen was surprised to learn he could get those hormones right away. “My doctor was like, ‘Okay cool, do you want to start next week?’ I was like, ‘Whoa! No, actually.’ I felt like I needed to almost send off my past self like Moses in a little basket down the river. I needed to say bye in some way.
“I’m a very sentimental person. I wanted to create a parting gift or time capsule. I knew I wanted to write these songs for the sake of capturing them as an album, but I didn’t know if I wanted it to be exclusively my high voice. It would make sense with a lot of the things I’m singing about, but also I was like, ‘I feel like there’s more to the story here. A low voice would serve that, too, but I also don’t want to wait to make these arrangements, because I don’t know what I’m going to sound like.’”
He decided to shape his transition around this project, recording with his high voice while beginning hormone treatment and focusing on the rollout for his 2022 debut album Good Grief.
“Worst case scenario, if my voice sounds like shit, I’ve got a high-voice album of really pretty songs,” he says of his thought process at the time. “That can be my parting gift not only to myself as a trans person but also myself as a musician, and that’s fine.”
Good Grief was Larsen’s way of “testing the waters” with album-making. Blurring Time had more restrictions, as he couldn’t re-record his high voice (using AI was of zero interest to Larsen). The “more is more” rock/bedroom pop approach of his debut no longer suits him, and those songs have mostly been retired from his setlists.
“I was trying to be someone I was not,” he continues. “I’ve always gravitated toward very quiet, open-tuned, finger-picking stuff, with pedal steel, cello or banjo. I’m a folk guy through and through. I’m not really a rocker. I think I really honed in on that a little bit more with the second one.”
That folkier shift has helped elevate Larsen’s profile well beyond Montreal, making headlines back in April after cancelling his U.S. tour upon learning of Trump administration policies barring transgender people from applying for American work visas — a situation he refers to as “visa-gate.” Since his passport has “M” marked as his sex, Larsen could not apply for a visa as they are now required to reflect the applicant’s birth sex, and cannot have “X” written on them.
He wrote to the authorities to confirm he’d be good to enter the country. They initially said yes. But Larsen decided last-minute to forgo his visa application citing “a pit in my stomach.” Soon after, he learned about the change in U.S. immigration policy. The decision had been made for him.
“The email was delivered in a very no-emotion kind of way,” adds Larsen. “There was no ‘We regret to inform you that you will not be able to participate in the world’s largest music market for the next four years.’ They were like, ‘Let us know if you want to talk more.’ I was like, ‘About what?’”
Larsen then spoke with his agent and label manager, discussing potential implications for his career with Blurring Time‘s release two weeks out. After a Zoom call with the American Federation of Musicians in April, he cancelled the tour.
The U.S. government’s policy change also caused issues for others in Larsen’s circle. Another transgender artist friend of his pulled out of an American festival for which he’d been booked, as he felt unsafe crossing the border. Before visa-gate, Larsen’s partner, Noah, had planned to visit him in L.A. for his show before Noah realized they couldn’t, having worked for a pro-Palestine nonprofit.
Since visa-gate garnered public attention, Larsen’s audience has grown significantly, though it’s a “weird cocktail” for him. Two weeks after it happened, Blurring Time came out, and both positive press and playlist placements were soon to follow.
“It’s hard to tell what is from visa-gate, and what is from the music just being good,” he says, adding that he “really rejects” the idea of his listenership growth being a consequence of his situation, even if he also sees it as a kind of “no press is bad press” moment.
“If the music was bad, probably no one would be sticking around. But my numbers have only continued to go up.”
The remainder of 2025 has been spent trying to “find a good balance between chilling, writing, playing and offering this album the longest lifespan it can have,” he says. Larsen toured across Canada until October and played U.K. dates in November, coinciding with the release of a deluxe edition of Blurring Time, featuring an exclusive track (“Night Bus”). This week, he’s playing two Montreal shows at PHI, on Dec. 3 and 4.
In October, he also released a book with his father Andrew, a children’s author, titled Call Me Gray, about a child coming out as non-binary to their father. “He wrote it right around the time I wrote Blurring Time,” says Larsen. “He wrote it to better understand me.”
Ultimately, Larsen hopes Blurring Time gives listeners something they can relate to, regardless of gender identity.
“At the end of the day, I’m just singing about changing, and wanting to be closer to my most authentic self. That’s not exclusive to being a trans person.
“While I hope my community in particular views these songs as a sort of salve for them, I also hope that everyone, regardless of lived experience, will be able to find a home within these songs.” ■
Bells Larsen performs at PHI (407 St-Pierre) on Dec. 3 (sold out) and 4, doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m., $35/$40, all ages.
For more on Bells Larsen, please visit his website.
Dave MacIntyre 