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During the long car rides, his mom introduced him to albums from John, David Bowie and Fleetwood Mac. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he moved to New Jersey with his mother when his parents briefly separated, and continued going to school in the city. It’s no surprise that Surviving the Suburbs has a more organic instrument-to-tape feel than its predecessor given his pedigree. In the end, it’s something I’m pretty proud of.” “I think with the lyrics and music on this album, it was about wanting to have a human moment and encounter with the listener. “I wanted to do something that felt like it was alive and breathing,” explains Miller. “We Both Want To” coasts on the optimism of quietly harboring feelings for a love interest, trading casual glances with them from afar, while the wide-eyed “Friends With You” grapples with taking a chance and the tension that comes with sharing your romantic feelings with a friend in hopes they feel the same. There’s a deeply visceral side, too, crystallizing in tales of the casual steps towards romance. The remorse sets in on the wistful “Sunday Scaries,” a piano-driven promise to oneself that, after a weekend of binge-drinking and partying, he’ll never do it again, only to repeat the same cycle once Friday rolls around. It’s a step forward into vibrant territory where the vitality of a live backing band gives Miller more Americana flavor, as if, he explains, “Elton John made a Bruce Springsteen record.” On the electrified title track, he intones on the chorus that “we can’t get out of here,” reflecting on how, when he returned to live with his parents, he reconnected with his townie friends who had never left and drowned his sorrows with them in alcohol and pills. Leaner and simpler than the lush, full-bodied arrangements of American English, Surviving the Suburbs is an honest self-reflection framed as a musical coming of age. The sessions, recorded in one take with five instruments in a room, yielded his sophomore album Surviving the Suburbs, a stark portrait of an artist whose life didn’t materialize as planned and how he coped with it. “I was stuck back in my hometown with no prospects of what to do next-no idea.”ĭepressed and uninspired, he reconnected with his old childhood mentor, a local producer, who listened to sketches of new material, inspired by the bleak suburban life he thought he’d fled for good. Despondent, he moved back in with his parents in New Jersey, disillusioned by where he had ended up. “I didn't have an apartment and hardly had any money after touring so much and you realize that everything comes out of your pocket in the end,” recalls Miller, now 24. Following his debut EP Headlights the next year, he released his first full-length, American English, in September 2016, putting him on an international tour that included stops at SXSW, Lollapalooza and multiple visits to Europe.īut when he returned to the States and the tour wrapped, it all came crashing down.
#Tor miller headlights professional#
In early 2014, the Brooklyn native signed to independent label Glassnote Records, putting his professional career on track at 20 years old. After dropping out of college two years in to chase his musical dreams, Tor Miller found himself living them in real time.