Alexander is a musical project out of Boston, Massachusetts fronted by Alex Fatato. With help from Brad Krieger (drums, keys, piano), John Margaris (bass, vocals), Brendan Cornish (mandolin, banjo, ukulele), Judy Chong and Mason Schmitt (vocals), Alexander makes a tender brand of music that draws upon a number of genres. With elements of ambient, folk and the even slacker rock of Nap Eyes, this is bedroom pop made vivid, the intimacy of the genre retained even as a richer palette develops.
Forthcoming record Settle Down, which is being released jointly by Disposable America and Forged Artifacts, looks to solidify this aesthetic, as first single ‘Capable’ suggests. Lyrically, the song takes a rather gloomy path, offering the kind of insular hopelessness familiar in bedroom pop, though the sound itself does not necessarily stick to the memo. Rather, it marries a relaxed rhythm with emotional intimacy, offering an honest warmth that rises into a more pressing chorus.
We’ve been granted the privilege of sharing a second single, ‘Going to Sleep’. Again there’s something of a juxtaposition between the brightness of the sound and the sadness of the lyrics, though there’s also the suggestion of hope flickering at the edges. “‘Going to Sleep’ was one of the first songs I wrote for this record,” Fatato explains, “and it might be my favorite. The B section says: ‘Spitting up the husk of what I won’t be, at least for today, I won’t be that way’ and I think that captures what I wanted the album to be about.”
This offers something of an explanation for the Alexander sound, and one which emerges naturally through repeated listens. The dissonance between style and content is no dissonance at all, rather a considered effort to find light within all things, as though a widened view on the possibility of strength, wonder and joy might allow more opportunities for these features to come to us.
Photo by Savannah Bastian