For years, Aäron Koch was the guitarist in other people’s bands. Writing intricate riffs and odd time signatures came easily, but the idea of writing a simple song, a verse, a chorus, a melody that could stand on its own, felt out of reach. He tried, failed, discarded early attempts, and pushed himself through the humbling exercise of writing “bad songs” just to learn the craft.
‘For Once’, his debut album, is the unexpected outcome of that struggle. Ironically, the songs that made the record were the very first fully realized songs he ever wrote, intended merely as an exercise, with no expectation that they would amount to anything. And yet, they stayed.
What makes this story even more striking is the way these songs came to life. They began as streams of sounds and phonetic phrases that only resembled English, an instinctive, wordless language. It was only in the final stage that Koch tried to fit real words to those melodies, and to his surprise, each time a recognizable story from his own life emerged. Stories that matched exactly with the emotions he had carried in the music from the beginning. “It felt as if I had invented a little story, only to realize afterwards that nothing about it was invented. I was unconsciously writing obstacles from my life away,” he explains.
His lyrics remain simple, without any literary pretension. “I’m anything but a poet, so I won’t pretend to be one,” Koch says. “But precisely because they are so simple, they feel real and truthful to me.”
The result is an album that balances melancholy and raw intensity, where vulnerability is never far from strength. Koch’s voice cuts straight through, while the band, with musicians from Calicos, Uma Chine and Tin Fingers, builds a sound that feels both timeless and urgent, echoing The Veils, My Morning Jacket and Strand of Oaks.
That honesty resonated quickly. In 2024, after only a handful of shows, Aäron Koch reached the finals of Humo’s Rock Rally and went on to support Belle & Sebastian at a sold-out Ancienne Belgique. ‘For Once’ shows why: it’s the sound of someone learning to write songs the hard way, and discovering in the process that, almost against his own expectations, he has something truly his own to say.