If you have been listening to Tejas’ new release, his 8 song EP Small Victories, and it puts you in the throes of a sense of a deja vu, you would be right. Half of this record is a re-release, meant to demarcate the tenth anniversary of his career in the industry. “A decade is a long time in today’s world as an independent artist which is why I decided to honour my first release by remastering it and re-issuing it for fans and friends alike,” says Tejas about his reason to do so. He would be right — because the Indian independent scene has long been vested with an erosive power that manages to reduce a huge chunk of the artist populace into part-timers who use the craft as an outlet, rather than their identifiable way of life. To persevere, to persist, and to remain are simultaneous acts of resilience or privilege, sometimes both.
About putting out Small Victories again, the artist adds,“You have a love for your first release because it started it all, you’ve wrestled with it because of the cringe-element of looking back on your younger self and all the mistakes and bold statements you made at the time, not really knowing what’s going to happen next.” The EP, I had assumed, would be two calendar pages from different decades stuck together with a whiplash of Tejas’ artistic maturation as their glue. There is a discernible divide within the project, which even without context of the history of Tejas and his discography is apparent to the average listener. Track 5, Until The End, and Track 6, Small Victories, exist in two different moments in time – in arrangement, in their lyrical content, and their overall identities as bodies of work, although created by the same artist, one in homage to the other. However, Small Victories is the outlier, because the other two songs, Stationary, and See You Tonight are “a couple of old songs from that era that fit the sonic and thematic space that I’ve never found a home for prior.”
All the songs on the EP can be mostly located into era-typical pop-rock, simplistic in their construction, with earnest and honest lyricism. One of my favorites from the tracklist is Philosophy, the narrative of confrontation of someone eternally befuddling juxtaposed with an uptempo number, is not new by any means but a recipe that always manages to work. The standout number, of course, is the eponymous Small Victories, written in deducible gratitude and leaning into indie-rock sensibilities.
The most fun part of listening to Small Victories is that it is functionally a time capsule. The groovy basslines, the stripped down acoustic guitar-playing, the lack of over-production which lends the project its distinct unpolished character which is almost unfamiliar in today’s time – all of it takes you back to the timeframe it was created, possibly even farther back into the past because you can tell that the entirety of the 2000s have heavily influenced the artist. In that, I think Tejas’ motives are realized – where the personal translates to the public, and one finds his sentiments translated, even if they were not part of what it took to get here.
