Alex and the young and lost boys.
February 8, 2011, 1 comments
Music in times of recession. Recently, Emilie Friedlander of Visitation Rites linked the economic meltdown inter alia to the “return of outmoded recording technologies like the 8-track and the cassette tape”. But as she herself observed as well, I’d argue that it’s by far not only the means of production that have taken a shift since Lehman went to the gutter, it’s also the music itself. Starting by the end of 2008 with some devastatingly beautiful tunes by a certain young man from Seattle who’s recording under the moniker Perfume Genius, we’ve come across quite a few artists as of late that all share a remarkable propensity towards music that is all about fragility and pure introspection. Re-interpreting popular topoi of Sturm und Drang (Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther comes to mind in particular) and early 19th century romanticism, albeit perhaps unconsciously, American artists like Idiot Glee or Allister Izenberg have unintentionally established a sub-genre in contemporary popular music that more than anything else should go by the already outworn designation “bedroom pop”, as the lonesome, unhappy adolescent creating music between his pillows while the world outside is happening without him is exactly the image being evoked by each and every of the musicians’ frail melodies.
The latest exponent of this artistic development is another young man, this hailing from Southern California, named Alex Jacob aka Therapies Son. Having chosen the moniker after a “horrible breakup” and a subsequent, still ongoing therapy, Alex’ gorgeous little pop gems became quite suddenly fairly popular in the blogosphere last November, and the hype has constantly been growing, although until this very day we’ve only been blessed with the scant amount of merely three songs. “I never wanted to be part of any movement”, Alex told me recently, and sure he ain’t. In fact, there’s no “movement” to be found here – the introspective nature of the music itself seems to preclude the very possibility of anything even close to that. Still, it’s hard to ignore the impression of a certain rise of such artists, and in his case it slightly appears as if someone had been waiting just for him to show up.
Of course, post-pubertal heartache and sorrows being sublimated into passionate love songs isn’t exactly an uncommon phenomenon in the history of popular music, and the same certainly holds true for music as a means of self-therapy. But the attention these young and lost boys are receiving at the moment is striking nonetheless, exemplified by the fact that, according to the artist, it took Transparent’s Jack Shankly and Sahil Varma only two days after Alex had started a myspace to hit him up. His unquestionably incredible talent notwithstanding, I maintain that this kind of awareness wouldn’t have occurred during the heyday of late capitalism, an assumption that is reinforcing the sociological implication that modernity once again has led us towards introversion.
Therapies Son’s debut EP Over The Sea is out on Transparent February 15. Pre-order via Pure Groove now. Below, watch the gorgeous video for Rose Red Rose, and don’t miss the latest EP gem that has found its way into the interwebs (via Transparent) today, the absolutely gorgeous and amazingly playful Yellow Mama.
Therapies Son – Yellow Mama
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Speaking of James Friley aka Idiot Glee, Impose has debuted the brand new track Do You Wanna Go? today, another blissful, sixties-jangling reminder of why we love that dude so much. It’s gonna be the a-side of an upcoming cassingle in Impose Magazine’s cassette series. Pre-order here.
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