TS Foss (album release), Tommy Goodroad & the Highway Birds, Dusk, Loveblaster

Danielle Tucci

A person in front of a winter Wisconsin landscape.

TS Foss

media release: What began as a farewell to the scene, Everything Finished, the brand new album from Madison singer-songwriter TS Foss, became the very thing that reignited his spark and dedication to music. Starting in 2015 as the quiet, solo expression of Tyler Fassnacht, a musician most notable for playing and touring in punk bands Proud Parents, Fire Heads and The Hussy, TS Foss was a project that spent five years in the back seat being slowly nurtured. After two EPs and a debut full length, all lo-fidelity bedroom recordings of acoustic guitars gently fingerpicked, and soft vocals breaking through hiss, Fassnacht was ready to expand on the project. He had a year of touring booked and grand plans made for 2020, but like many artists, he instead found himself unemployed, lost in the throes of a global pandemic.

Fassnacht began writing Everything Finished, arriving this spring on Wisconsin-based label NightBell Records, early on in lockdown. His intention was to create one final cathartic Ode to Dedication. What happens when you devote your life to something, only to have it slip right through your fingers? After a year of obsessing over every detail, Fassnacht was ready to work with a full band, and record TS Foss in a real studio for the first time.

Opening track, “Playing Smart,” starts with a sparsely picked acoustic guitar and low, timid vocals, but when the whole band drops in on the first chorus, the new and fully realized TS Foss is introduced. Over the course of eight tracks, clocking in at just under 45 minutes, Everything Finished washes over like a film, taking you through the laidback bounce of “New Day Notion,” the sad, saccharine twang of “Familiar Crowds,” the flourishing reliance of first single “Grown Used To It,” all the way to the epic waltz of eight minute closer “In Due Time.” Musings on expectation, grief, acceptance and fulfillment are accompanied by the lush colors and textures of the instrumental layers.

Self-produced, and worked diligently to perfection alongside engineer Max Jewer at Clutch Sound Studios, Everything Finished is performed by the accompanying band of Emili Earhart (Jex Thoth, Cult of Lip, Graham Hunt Band, Woodman/Earhart) on piano, Peter Briggs (Tommy Goodroad and the Highway Birds, Elijah Berlow, Reilly Downes) on pedal steel, and Heather Sawyer (The Hussy, Heather the Jerk, Proud Parents) on drums. The record also features string contributions from renowned Montreal cellist Zou Zou Robideaux (Basha Bulat) and fiddle from Madison’s own Isaac deBroux-Slone (Disq).