Photos /Austin Macedo
Messer is Mitch Grassi’s solo project, but calling it “solo” feels almost misleading. Messer is a dismantling of the scaffolding that held up a more curated version of self. With Cuts, his latest EP, Grassi shares the stuff that didn’t make the first cut. The songs that were too raw, too personal, and too incongruent with the fantasy he once built are now the centerpiece.
The sound is lush, electronic, and emotionally precise. Think club music with a soul, synthpop with scars. Break Open, the focus track in Cuts, is a nocturnal confessional disguised as a dance anthem. Messer uses nightlife as a kind of emotional camouflage, dancing not for joy but for erasure, for the temporary suspension of self. The club lights become both stage and sanctuary, where sweating through the illusion allows fleeting moments of connection. The song’s emotional architecture is built on tension: between change and resistance, between hiding and revealing, between being a vessel and being the wind that moves through it.
Recently, we sat down with Messer to talk shadow work, sonic liberation, and the quiet rebellion of letting yourself be seen.
Messer feels like a reclamation as much as a rebirth. When you describe Cuts as songs from the cutting room floor, did revisiting these tracks unlock a new layer of who you are—or who you’re becoming—as an artist?
I don’t know if it was a new layer so much as a layer of myself that had always been there. At the very beginning, Messer was more of a curated ‘fantasy’ identity. I had a lot of fun creating that fantasy with the first record, but I felt that I couldn’t continue on doing that without sacrificing authenticity.
You’ve spoken about shadow work in this album. Was there a specific track where facing that inner darkness felt especially disorienting or unexpectedly freeing?
“Railway Car” came from the most fearful place, I think. I was really coming face-to-face with these insecurities that I was consciously suppressing for a long time, insecurities mainly about not being sufficient and not being worthy of love.
From Roses to Cuts, there’s a clear expansion in sonic language. What led you to push toward the more ethereal, club-influenced vibe heard in Break Open?
That is a sound that has always energized me. Dance music is a large part of my musical identity, so it only makes sense that this album led me there. I wanted to capture a feeling of liberation.
Were there visual artists, designers, or filmmakers whose work shaped the emotional palette of Cuts?
Early PlayStation ads, 2000s trance album covers, late 90s Prada ads.
The production across Cuts feels intentional, intimate, and spacious. Can you walk us through your process with Break Open? Did it start with a lyric, a beat, a feeling?
I think it started with the opening arpeggio! The verse melody arrived soon after that, which created a really nice sense of hopeful anticipation. We loved the way the song kept building on a steady incline throughout the whole song and then eventually exploded at the end. It’s not a typical pop structure, and it’s a really euphoric release.
You mention songs that “deserve to be heard.” Did any self-imposed rules or fears ever stop you from sharing work like Break Open in the past?
At the beginning of the Messer project, it was important for me to set myself apart from my other musical ventures, to be radically different than what I had done previously. I think I had unintentionally created some extreme creative limits in my mind, barring myself from releasing anything that sounded too conventional. What I learned is that accessibility in my music is not a hinderance, but rather an open invitation for more people to listen to and enjoy it.
How do you protect the authenticity of Messer as your solo project, especially when reception and comparison to Pentatonix are inevitable, especially from carry-over fans?
It may not be for every Pentatonix fan, and I don’t expect it to be. Both projects stand alone. The strongest artists, in my opinion, are multi-faceted. All I can really do is continue to be myself and stand by the work that I do.
What’s on the horizon after the album?
I’m already writing for the next record. The response to Cuts has been so positive, and it has really inspired me to create more music from this ultra-authentic, ultra-vulnerable place. I’m really looking forward to where that will take me, creatively.
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