Beyond Bells Larsen’s “Visa Gate” Tragedy

On his new album Blurring Time, the Montreal songwriter finds catharsis in harmony, memory, and hard-won self-acceptance.

by Dust Cwaine

Photo by Lawrence Fafard

Published on April 23, 2025

I sit at my desk, scrolling Instagram, feeling angry. I’m watching Bells Larsen share with the Internet that he won’t be touring the USA in support of his sophomore album, Blurring Time, because his passport has an M gender marker that doesn’t align with the identification he was assigned at birth.

As a trans person myself, I feel outraged. I think about the elders we lost because of hate like this, and the wisdom and stories that were lost with them. So I reached out to RANGE to see if I could talk with Larsen ahead of the release of Blurring Time—because there’s a nattering voice inside me that wants to know more about this person. Watching him share himself so openly and seemingly fearlessly with the world at large fascinates me.

Going into the piece, I noticed that most of the recent coverage around Larsen pertains to “Visa Gate,” as Larsen calls it. I see it as my writerly duty—as the head queer in charge of this piece—to throw well-deserved shade at the unoriginality of the news cycle. As a musician who is also a drag queen, I am uniquely qualified for this shade. And hey, listen: it’s not that it’s not important to talk about—it’s actually that there is so much more to talk about when it comes to Larsen. His creativity is so unique. He’s been playing guitar since he was eight. It’s no wonder we hotly await the release of Blurring Time, especially after his debut album, Good Grief, put him at the forefront of the Canadian indie folk scene. That record was rich, specific, gut-wrenching storytelling, something that he doubles down on in his most recent effort. So naturally, when the call started, I offered Larsen the chance to not talk about the thing that everybody is talking about—and he accepted, enthusiastically.

There’s a special kind of magic when two trans people exchange pronouns. There’s an energy that’s tongue-in-cheek—it’s still respectful, but it also has this edge of taking a dig at the often compulsory pronoun parade that happens when allies are around. It’s a secret relief that you are not being outed, because you both already know you are queer. It’s magic, trust me. This process disarmed us both, because what was supposed to be an interview immediately evolved into a kiki. Larsen clocked the Folklore and Evermore Taylor Swift vinyls I have hanging on my wall, and then forced a “Sophie’s Choice” on me between the two. We both picked Folklore, obviously. He mentioned that the Swift song “Invisible String” inspired his song “People Who Mean So Much to Me.” Both are songs about fate and timing, and the people who come into our lives based on the alchemical balance of the two.

This ongoing theme of time in Larsen’s artistic expression is not lost on me. Blurring Time explores a non-chronological approach to life and memories. It speaks to the queer ache of trying to make up for lost time. The album’s vocals live in conversation with themselves, as half were recorded in Larsen’s higher register before he started taking testosterone, and the other half were recorded once his voice reached the deep, rich timbre we know now. It’s an artistic time capsule for an artist that is as innovative as he is charming.

It’s hard to put into words what time means to queer people. We often feel like some parts of our life are missing some part of our self, and we live in that complicated grief until our life experiences catch up to our ongoing self-evolution. Blurring Time as an album is a walk-a-mile-in-our-shoes kind of experience.

“It’s a very dizzying experience to think about the dichotomy between liking someone and loving someone, especially when they are your family, and you do love, but you don’t like,” says Larsen as we dive deep into talking about family—one of the most cliché topics for queers. We just like to compare notes. I brought it up because his song “My Brother and Me” was a standout on the album for me, tracing the complicated relationship Larsen has with his brother. “I’m very happy to say that we are so close; he has put down the Jordan Peterson, he is a great guy and I love him a lot,” says Larsen, wistfully.

He shares with me that he figured out who he was early on, and that his home life supported and nurtured him not only as an artist, but also as a queer kid. Growing up, his family’s activities for creative expression included finger painting, watercolours, and theatre, with an emphasis always placed on self-expression. I asked him whether his brother heard the song, and Larsen said: “I sent it to him before I recorded the first vocals and he said ‘I support you, this is your art.’”

The only request made was for Larsen to not play the song live when his brother was in the audience—which he says he and his band will honour—except at the May 1 album release show in Toronto’s Great Hall, where, as Larsen puts it, “he will have to suck it up.”

In Montreal, Larsen is surrounded by artists of varying disciplines and depths of professionalism. Perhaps inspired by his creative upbringing, but also just because he loves variety, Larsen sees this as a way to stay stimulated without being overly obsessive about music specifically. Balance is hard-earned for artists because the grind is an everyday hurdle, but being surrounded by painters, poets, and writers offers a refreshing take on a busy world for a busy artist.

“I am very inspired by the creative people in my life, and the ways these people find to be creative even if they are not pursuing that to be their main profession,” he says.

Larsen seems to be hinting at the sacrifice that goes into choosing art as a career. I won’t speculate, and I certainly didn’t pry, but I knew I was speaking with someone who is attuned to the magic and misery of being, for lack of a better term, a career artist.

When the subject moves to transitions, we get giddy while also maintaining depth. Larsen says “I figured out who I was later in life. I look at a lot of people in my life who figured it out earlier, who feel, from my point of view at least, that they are farther ahead than I am.”

Maybe at the beginning of his transition this seemed like a detriment to his sense of self, but he asserts that he feels grounded in it now. I offered that comparison—when it is in reference to queer people and our individual journeys—is often just showing us what we want. Our lack of having what we want earlier in life is often the culprit responsible for that impatience and comparison. Time has a funny way of twisting the efforts we put into our goals into results that astound us. Delusionally, we seem to always forget that’s just how it works.

Our little interview kiki did reveal that the results of a certain indie folk singer’s top surgery were more than pleasing. “They strapped me to the surgery table like Jesus on the cross and I was like, ‘I hope this is the best day of all of your lives,’” says Larsen, jokingly.

Sadly for you, dear reader, you do not get to see the beautifully created and annotated top surgery goal chart that was submitted to the surgeon, like I did—but maybe one day, if you’re a good ally.

Larsen assures me that this release feels different. After some therapy and some exposure in the music business, he seems steadfast in his unique offering as a creative voice. He is less interested in focusing on who is doing what and when, and more focused on having a good time with the rollout of Blurring Time.

“By virtue of becoming myself in many regards, I am more confident, I do know that I have a seat at the table, and I do know that what I have to say is worth saying, so I don’t feel that I have to scramble as much,” he says. “I feel like I can just exhale and that I don’t have to surround myself with anyone in particular, I can just surround myself with people who love me for me.”

I am so grateful for the time I got with Larsen. His way of twisting every subject into a metaphor was comforting. I found him to be light and present in a way very few people are. Hope is a precious commodity—and that we get to have Bells Larsen as our Trans Troubadour fills me with it.

As we wrap up our call, I ask if it was nice not to talk about Visa Gate, to which he quips: “I really appreciate you not asking about Visa Gate, please quote it exactly like that.”

Bells Larsen’s new album, Blurring Time, is out April 25 via Royal Mountain

Dust Cwaine is a musician and iconic drag queen based in Vancouver, BC.