My friend who was dating seriously has someone to bring back home over the holidays. One of my classmates from high school is already engaged and taking pictures for her social media account.Meanwhile, I am trying to avoid my ex while walking across campus. It feels like everybody but you is ahead of schedule, and that theme lies at the heart of the new album by ROLE MODEL, Chuck Timely & The Hourglass.
The album captures what it feels like to want love while watching everyone around you find it first. Since you know that there is no one who develops the way another one does, watching other people develop relationships will make you feel as though you are falling behind. Suddenly, love seems like something that should happen naturally but is now something you have failed to achieve.
Released on Aug. 7, the album introduces listeners to Chuck Timely, ROLE MODEL singer Tucker Pillsbury’s latest alter ego. Chuck is imagined as a time-traveling musician with an appreciation for the sounds of decades past, but underneath the character and aesthetic is a problem other people have: he wants to find something real.
The album opens with “Chuck’s Mantra,” which establishes that desire. Rather than pretending that he doesn’t care about love, Chuck allows himself to admit that he wants it. From there, the album moves through the excitement, disappointment, and confusion that comes with finding a relationship when most of your romantic experiences are unpredictable. That might be what makes Chuck Timely & The Hourglass feel perfectly fitting for your late teens/twenties.
The album never seems to give chuck an easy answer.
There’s an expectation that this period of your life should be an exciting and carefree time. You’re supposed to date people, make mistakes, and collect enough chaotic stories to tell your friends the next afternoon you go out to eat. But somewhere underneath the fun can be a quieter question: When am I going to meet someone who stays?
Instead the songs move between optimism and disappointment.
A connection starts to feel promising in “Good Thing” before “Joy” leaves him questioning everything again. There are nights out, fleeting romances, and plenty of longing in songs like“Chasing Midnight”, but there is also a willingness to admit that wanting love isn’t embarrassing, especially in “The Wedding”.
He says in an interview with Jimmy Fallon: “A lot of it is about time and time passing and I was in this two year period of being single, and my friends were getting married and everything’s kinda moving forward.”
The feeling of watching everyone else move forward while you seem to be standing still is what makes the album hit especially hard.
College can make it easy to believe there is some invisible schedule you are supposed to follow. Someone’s in a relationship. Someone else has already found the person they think they’ll marry. Meanwhile, you might still be dealing with an ex, another failed talking stage, or wondering whether it will finally be your turn at love. We aren’t necessarily running out of time just because someone else found what we want first.
Despite the album title built around an hourglass, the album doesn’t suggest that love has a deadline. Maybe finding the right relationship isn’t about racing against an hourglass. Maybe the periods when nothing seems to be happening are still changing us. The failed dates, almost-relationships, nights spent wondering whether we’ll ever find our special–someone are still a part of growing up.
And for an album starring a fictional time traveler, Chuck Timely & The Hourglass tells us that we don’t even need to know exactly when something good is coming to believe that you’re deserving of it.