The Messy Process of Becoming: A Look at Greg Orrē’s I AM IN IT, VOL. 3

Article by Andreea the Narrative , Images provided by Kristen Boyer

I AM IN IT, VOL. 3: THE RE-EDUCATION OF GREGORY feels like an album about trying to figure out who you are. It is about the messy process of growing, changing, and realizing that the person you are does not always fit neatly into the roles placed on you. The record explores identity, adulthood, masculinity, relationships, and all the ways we are expected to define ourselves. Rather than offering clear answers, the album seems content to sit in that uncertainty.

The album’s fragmented structure is central to that feeling. Fifteen short tracks drift between sincerity, irony, melancholy, longing, self-consciousness, and surreal emotional detours, creating the feeling of someone constantly rebuilding themselves in real time. Art from queer communities, outsider perspectives, and other marginalized experiences has often explored this kind of uncertainty: unfinished, transitional, emotionally fluid, and resistant to neat categorization. This album embraces that instability rather than trying to hide it.

The subtitle, The Re-Education of Gregory, suggests a transformation born out of disorientation. Not a movie-style reinvention where everything suddenly makes sense, but the much messier process of unlearning old versions of yourself and rebuilding along the way. The record explores the instability of identity rather than trying to define it. Greg Orrē’s voice often sounds like someone trying on different emotional selves, letting them go, and searching for one that fits right.

Songs like “EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE I LOVE WILL CHANGE” hit especially hard because they recognize that people change, relationships change, and life rarely follows the path we are told to expect. The album understands that uncertainty can be painful, but also freeing. There is grief in that realization, but there is also a sense of acceptance.

Throughout the record, the voice at the centre of these songs rarely hides behind confidence or emotional distance. There is awkwardness, sentimentality, dependence, and fear of being left behind. Those are not qualities we often celebrate, but they make the album feel deeply human. The record does not treat vulnerability as something to overcome. Instead, it allows those messy emotions to exist.

There is also something quietly powerful about how the album approaches place. The recurring prairie imagery, especially on songs like “HALF MOON OVER RIVER SASKATCHEWAN,” creates a landscape that feels both lonely and deeply familiar. For anyone who has grown up feeling different, whether because of identity, circumstance, or simply personality, wide-open spaces can sometimes feel strangely confining. The album captures that tension beautifully, feeling emotionally enormous inside landscapes that demand restraint.

Production-wise, the record’s roughness becomes part of its charm. The abrupt endings, uneven textures, and deeply personal quality resist the expectation that everything needs to feel polished and perfect. Independent and alternative artistic traditions, many of them shaped by marginalized voices, have often valued process over polish, emotional truth over technical perfection, and personality over marketability. This album fits comfortably within that lineage. It sounds lived-in rather than engineered.

The album does not always look outward. At times, it becomes so wrapped up in its own thoughts that it feels almost like reading pages from someone’s notebook. For some listeners, that intimacy will be exactly what makes it resonate. Others may find themselves wanting a little more distance. Either way, that tension feels like part of what makes the work interesting.

What ultimately makes the album compelling is that it refuses easy answers. It is ironic and sincere, lonely and theatrical, tender but guarded. The record never sounds completely certain of itself, and it is stronger because it does not pretend otherwise.

Instead, I AM IN IT, VOL. 3 suggests that identity is not something we simply figure out and move past. It is something we continue to reshape, question, and redefine throughout our lives.

Overall, this is an album worth hearing from beginning to end. Its emotional landscape is just as important as its individual songs, and the full experience rewards patient listening. I AM IN IT, VOL. 3: THE RE-EDUCATION OF GREGORY invites listeners to sit with uncertainty for a while, and that may be where its greatest strength lies.