You might be surprised Andy Grammer called his new album Monster. He was too. Long known as one of the most optimistic bright lights in the pop singer-songwriter sphere, Grammer found himself fighting demons and finding new corners of himself, places he hadn’t wanted to venture before. “Being happy, anger is my vulnerability,” he says. “I didn’t know how to deal with getting in touch with anger. I just pretended it wasn’t there.” Grammer embarked on a long mental health journey that mirrored an exploratory five-year interim between albums which, of course, happened to coincide with a particularly tumultuous five years for all of us. After everything, Monster, arriving October 4, became a document of someone walking through a fire they never wanted to even look at, and what happens when they emerge on the other side.

Grammer wasn’t intending to make an album built around mandolin, but it happened. He wrote one song called “Bigger Man,” the genesis and skeleton key to what became Monster. It was an uncustomary track for him: grappling with anger, but striving to remain bigger than the darker sides of that emotion. Suddenly a new album began pouring out of Grammer. The folk pedigree of the mandolin proved inspiring. “There’s something about Americana and the twang that felt real to me when singing about struggle,” he explains.

Now 40, Grammer’s seen his fair share of real shit, and the songs on Monster capture it all — the ugly and the beautiful sitting alongside one another, each making no sense without its counterpart. From the hurt and confusion of the album’s opening, these songs trace Grammer’s process of re-centering himself with what really matters in life before concluding with “Friends And Family.” Grammer sings of all the wild turns his life has taken, but decides “It all means nothing without friends and family.” It’s a portrait of a man who has wrestled with parts of himself, and found what’s really important.

“I think people will understand the journey — from acknowledging the anger, leaving and experiencing things, and then coming home to realize you’re not able to be your full self without these things,” Grammer concludes. “And when we all end up singing it together at the top of our lungs — that’s what makes life explosive.”