REEL BOY | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW

Reel Boy isn’t waiting around for the perfect moment, he’s building one in real time. With a new track landing every month, his approach cuts straight through the overthinking that holds most artists back, favouring instinct and momentum over polish for the sake of it. That energy carries into Adults Are Talking, where fuzzed-out textures and sharp melodic instincts collide in a way that feels both nostalgic and immediate, pulling you into something that’s constantly on the edge of breaking open. But underneath it all, there’s a quieter tension at play, a willingness to sit in uncertainty, to let imperfections stay, and to keep moving forward without needing everything to be resolved.

TRACK REVIEW - Adults Are Talking

There’s something immediately transportive about Adults Are Talking. The opening synth pulls you into a hazy, nostalgic space that feels expansive without trying too hard, the kind of atmosphere that lingers before anything even really begins. When the vocals arrive, they cut through with a conversational, almost offhand delivery that contrasts the scale of the production, grounding the track in something human. It feels less like you’re being introduced to a song and more like you’ve stepped into a moment already in motion.

What really lands is the way Reel Boy holds back the chorus. Letting the melody surface through instrumentation first creates this subtle tension, leaving you waiting for the release and when it hits, it feels earned. You can already picture it live, voices coming back at full volume. The vintage drum tones give it a textured, worn-in feel that stops the track from ever feeling too clean or safe. Adults Are Talking doesn’t just sit between introspection and release, it drags you through both, then leaves you somewhere in between, still buzzing, still unresolved, like the conversation never actually ended.

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REEL BOY PRESS PHOTO

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Releasing one song every month feels almost like a public diary. Do you see those releases as finished statements, or snapshots of where you were at that exact moment in time?

I see them as finished statements. I'm not aiming to catalogue anything or document parts of my own life. I'm just aiming to write a song that I would want to listen to when it's finished.

You mention emerging from the ashes of multiple failed projects. What did those “failures” teach you that success never could have?

A lot of those projects fizzled out. We would be hitting the road hard and playing all over the place and then someone would suggest taking a break and those breaks never ended. I think, especially in the music world, it's important to keep working and keep trying. It is exhausting, but nothing worth doing is easy.

There’s something interesting about committing to consistency in a world that romanticises perfection. Has releasing monthly changed how you think about what a “good” song actually is?

I was actually thinking about this when I decided to take on the challenge of a new song every month. I was working on my latest album and there was a song writing contest on the music streaming platform Tidal. I wasn't finished with any of the songs, but I submitted one anyway on a whim. I was shocked to find that I was selected to be put on a playlist and get some money out of it. It was then when I decided to stop chasing perfection and just work on the song for a set amount of time and then release it. 

Your music blends fuzz, distortion and melody in a way that feels both chaotic and controlled. Do you feel like you’re trying to organise noise, or embrace it?

I'm a huge fan of the 80's and 90's indie bands that embraced their punk rock roots, but didn't shy away from poppy melodies. Bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fan Club, and The Posies all embrace fuzz and distortion, but have such powerful melodies that can still get stuck in your head. I'm just aiming to do my own version of that 

“No Bucket” touches on helplessness against time. Does releasing music so frequently feel like a way of keeping up with time, or pushing back against it?

I like that. "keeping up with time". That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Life is moving forward and I'm going to just keep getting older. I have goals and things I want to accomplish in my music career. I don't feel like I have completed any of them yet, so what better way to grow and learn as a musician than to practice making music, writing music and letting it out into the world?

“I’d Like to Meet an Alien” suggests curiosity beyond the human experience. Do you think your music is more about understanding yourself, or escaping yourself?

My music is introspective, but being raw is scary to me. I try to hide behind metaphors or use intentionally vague language to distance myself from the song. The good thing about this is I allow myself to write about more vulnerable topics in a comfortable way and I do find myself exploring and understanding my own feelings through it.

Your first album was full of “love letters,” but not just to people. What does it mean to love something like an idea, a memory, or even a piece of culture?

Humans love to love. I love so many different things, but we live in a world where being honest with yourself and loving things is often seen as a negative thing. Videos and articles talking about why something is bad or not as good as it could be go viral and our culture has been veiled in a cynicality that I find gross. Especially in musicians, it's common to see people discredit successful or mainstream acts to give off an air of intelligence. I wanted to focus on things I loved and love them out loud. It's my little act of rebellion.

When you’re releasing so often, there’s no time to overthink. Has that forced you to trust your instincts more, or made you question them more?

I've never been one to overthink production. I started making music on a four track yamaha tape machine I got from a thrift store and there is no room for overthinking there. When I took the leap to digital, I kept the same methodology. The rapid releases do force me to trust myself during the writing process. I sometimes write a line and think it could be better and I keep coming back to it for months, but in this project I just have to let it lay where it falls. One line that I had to just let be for the sake of releasing stuff was in the third verse of "Lay on the Earth", I just repeated the third line of that verse twice. I hated that when I wrote it, but now that I'm removed from it, I actually really like it.

There’s a thread of anxiety and vulnerability in your work. Do you feel like your songs are a way of resolving those feelings, or simply documenting them?

There's a thread of working through it. I think by facing it, I can explore these feelings in a way that I have control. I don't think I'll ever truly resolve these feelings as they will continue to change as I continue to change, but at least by writing about it, I can work towards understanding them.

If someone followed your monthly releases for a full year, what do you hope they’d notice, a clear evolution, or something more subtle beneath the surface?

If someone followed all of these releases for a full year, I would just hope they found a song they liked. I'm not aiming for anything more than that. I want to write songs that I like, and hopefully other people end up liking them too.