ALEX IZENBERG - Alex Izenberg & The Exiles

This time you have no excuse. Continuing to ignore Alex Izenberg is no longer possible, especially now that the Los Angeles musician faces the toughest test of his career, recruiting a band, The Exiles, and taking on the sleepy world of record promotion with a rather tricky challenge: putting the influences of King Crimson and Fleet Foxes on the same level, with philosophical musings lifted from Alan Watts in support.

The simmering mix of such dissimilar sonic impulses is actually a small triumph. The chamber-pop of previous albums has given way to a sturdier structure; even when melody takes the upper hand, the Californian musician brings in guitar riffs and elaborate instrumental arrangements ("An Obscured Odyssey").

It's clear from the very first cries of "The Gospel Of Exiles" that, without giving up a typically pop concreteness, Alex Izenberg is ready to cross boundaries, reconciling folk-rock grooves with traces of psychedelia, but it's in "The Wraith Behind Your Eyes" that the interplay of contrasts between near-punk roughness and jangle-pop radiance reaches its apex, with a masterpiece of instrumental, lyrical and rhythmic fluidity that leaves its mark.

Even when the already-declared affinities with Randy Newman resurface, the style is always mocking and sharp ("Drinking The Dusk Away"), and on more than one occasion the echo of another great visionary like Richard Swift feels almost inevitable ("Dreams Of Deja-Vu").

With ineffable candor Alex Izenberg dives into the web of late-70s pop-kitsch ("Pareidolia"), doesn't spare some background pop-jazz mawkishness ("Threaded Dances"), yet without giving up the enticing promises flaunted in the press release, paying homage to the fine magic of an album like Fleet Foxes' "Crack Up" in the beautiful, finely arranged "Only The Moon Knows" (not by chance, Phil Ek, who mixed the aforementioned album, was brought in to mix this one too).

Alex Izenberg's first album with a band behind him is an artistic success, a varied and original example of pop-rock songwriting outside the norm, where verve — "United States (Of Mind)" — and sweetness ("As The Dawn Serenades The Dark") remain in pleasant balance, and the echoes of the past never fall into mere nostalgic emptiness.

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01/10/2024