Perhaps best known as part of Brooklyn art pop duo Rubblebucket, Alex Toth also records under the moniker Tōth, using the project for the more intimate and vulnerable side of his work. Released in 2021, most recent album You And Me And Everything typified the unguarded honesty of the project, exploring the experience of falling in love in the aftermath of a long-term relationship. A release as unpredictable as it was vulnerable, Tōth blending confessional folk and experimental jazz to try to communicate what might otherwise prove difficult to convey.
With a new release on the horizon via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy, Tōth has shared the single ‘Spiraling’ as an early preview. Grounded by the signature trumpet and guitar, the song appears relatively spare on the surface, but as Toth details an experience of precarious love it blossoms into something altogether richer and more immersive, the sound rising to meet the interior weather of its singer. The result manages to evoke the duality of human being, where benign surfaces mask roiling energy beneath the surface, always threatening to spill into the world. “Trance / the zombie walk of your and my romance,” he sings in the opening lines, “distracting us until our eyes could open / the feeling that we never stood a chance / this is dangerous I need to relax.”
It comes complete with a video shot by in one take Michael Leviton at Owl Music Parlor, a visual equivalent of the song featuring Toth himself, where everything is stripped back to apparent simplicity, only for new layers of meaning to emerge. “You can see me losing my mind over the course of the video,” he says. “At one point the mic literally falls apart, and I’m trying to keep it together while singing ‘When I’m really woke I won’t be scared to listen…’ It’s chaos, but the perfect metaphor for the song.”
‘Spiraling’ is out now via Northern Spy and Egghunt Records and available from the Tōth Bandcamp page.