Kevin Bronson on June 17th, 2019

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Two Cheers is the music vehicle of singer-songwriter and DIY recording artist Bryan Akcasu, who made his mark after moving to Los Angeles and releasing albums in 2014 and ’15. A couple of years ago, after the deaths of his mother and grandmother, he put music on the back burner to Detroit and work (he has a degree in chemistry from Occidental College) to support his wife.

Now he has returned to L.A. to rekindle the chemical reactions in Two Cheers songs. And there are many. No matter the sonic reference points of his early songs (he’s released an excellent 20-song compilation on Spotify and Bandcamp that’s a “best-of” the past five years), there’s an unfiltered emotionalism in his songs. The confessional indie artists of the late ’90s and early ’00s come to mind.

Two Cheers’ “comeback” single is “Future Constellations,” one of those ostensibly sad songs that turn out to be uplifting. “‘Future Constellations’ is about a night under the stars in Michigan’s wild and chilly upper peninsula, longing for something or someone who’s never coming back,” Akcasu says. “I wrote this song because back in Detroit, I had a terrible sense of loss: I missed my friends who spread out across the country, I missed my life in California, I missed my mom and grandma who had both just passed, and I had the feeling of losing my innocence, too, especially seeing my once-happy family in so much pain and having so many hopes and plans shattered.

“So, while I can’t pinpoint the subject of the song; I just had a longing for a lost world, lost people, lost hope, and I wanted to believe I could relive it all and see everyone again. During those days, before we left Michigan, I used to visit my aunt’s cabin on Lake Superior and just kick around on my own. One night on the lake, I started thinking about the constellations changing shape over millions and billions of years, and how the arrangements of stars we know now are just a snapshot of the universe at this time. They’ll scatter over time, but maybe if enough time passes, stars will eventually end up making the same shapes, and the constellations we know could reform. It seemed like the right metaphor.”

||| Stream: “Future Constellations”