‘Settle Down’ is Alexander’s debut album. Stories and songs about living on your own for the first time and the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with it. The songs came in a the time after Alex Fatato’s rock band Du Vide broke up. The songwriter decided to pull up his roots and make the move south to Nashville, Tennessee. It was that move, and the impending emotion that would come from being someone in a new place, that triggered the writing for this record.
Alexander’s voice lends itself to a tender and fractured characteristic that make it vulnerably enchanting. Each break and crack letting another dose of emotion out with each carefully delivered line. A vocal delivery and range reminiscent of Conor Oberst and a sonic palette echoing some of Bright Eyes’ records, there is a transcendental meditation meets shoe gaze rock n’ roll vibe to ‘Strange Time’.
kept it quiet for a long time
but then I got tired
nothing stays good when I’m trying
to not be a liar
Fatato has a way of delivering simple lines like the above in such a way that they pierce the skin of your chest and work their way inward, emanating the feeling of each one. There is some uncertainty present in the words of these songs. A melancholia of questioning decisions and doing one’s best to figure things out. His words resonating deeply over ambient guitars and throbbing heartbeat rhythms of bass and pattering drums.
It is music that, on all fronts from the arrangement to the lyrics, is evocative of a very certain time and place that most humans deal with. Joy and pain, triumphs and moments of feeling powerless. The condition of being a person, and all put over whimsical reverb and an alternative edge.
Keep an eye out for this record when it drops in its entirety this week. You can grab it on Alexander’s Bandcamp page. October 5th.