Just days after announcing their new record with the stunning music video for its opening track “ALL I NEED,” alexalone digitally release ALEXALONE TECHNICAL RESEARCH – streaming now for your listening pleasure. Pre-order your copy of the limited edition Silver w/ Black Splatter vinyl due October 27… or join the band in Austin at Breakaway Records next Saturday, October 7, for their record release show and get your copy before the rest of the world (hehehe)!

On their 2021 Polyvinyl debut, ALEXALONEWORLD, frontrunner Alex Peterson recorded most of the project on their own through a deep pandemic daze, accreting bass and guitar takes in homespun overdub sessions and collecting parts from friends. Now, surrounded by the those same collaborators, darkness and heaviness flood the tunes, the guitar tessellations and dynamo drums suddenly invoking Slint, Sonic Youth, and Boris in epics that may last for 13 minutes. They offset that formidable sound, though, with a melodic sweetness and a lyrical tenderness, which find Alex attempting to deal with this damaging world rather than succumb to it. Imagine looking skyward on a cloudy night and spotting just enough stars to know they’re still there: That is ALEXALONE TECHNICAL RESEARCH, a five-track album that trumpets the arrival of a mighty but vulnerable new rock band - listen below:

Operating as a seemingly solid quintet, Alex Peterson, Sam Jordan, Drewsky Hulett, Mari Maurice, and Hannah Read raced into a studio in Silsbee, Texas, capturing four tracks at Lazybones Audio with engineer Tommy Read (Hannah’s brother). However, with the end of these first four songs, comes the cessation of alexalone as a five-piece as both Mari and Hannah chose to focus on their respective solo projects. These are surviving snapshots of something that no longer exists. 

Written as a prescient note-to-self about not getting pushed around by other people’s whims, “FULL BODY LEARNING” rises through concentric Motorik circles to empty into a slash-and-burn riff, alexalone bearing down with all the weight of doom metal before pulling up for air. “I have to accept the things I can’t change,” Alex finally sings in the ninth minute, offering up a secular prayer. “Be good to people. Try to communicate.” The guitars rage and whine and whisper, unspooling into oblivion in every direction.

And there’s the drift of “ALL I NEED,” a response to gender dysphoria in the dual battlegrounds of Texas and oneself. At first quiet and brooding, as though Peterson were giving into self-doubt, the song builds toward a breakdown, then plows ahead like a battle hymn, its sharp riff wielded like a weapon. This is an anthem for sublimating existential anxiety into empowerment, all your pals gathered around to join in the charge. Indeed, “ANGELMAKER” is an extended ode to having those kinds of friends, ones that will help you navigate your troubles in close quarters and in real time. At turns wistful, melancholic, and hopeful, its fitful and redemptive 13 minutes suggest just how much we can accomplish in solidarity. “I’ve got angels in my life,” Alex sings just before the band crashes down once more, more resolute than ever. “It’ll be alright.”

Alex, Drewsky, and Sam took that ending as the invitation for a new beginning, using the momentum from those recordings to rearrange those tracks as a trio. Jordan began to sing some, with Hulett moving entirely to Bass VI, a six-string bass that enables them to add dimension and depth beyond mere root notes. Before her departure, Mari joined this trio at Austin’s First Presbyterian Church to cut the record's fifth and final track, “HEAD IN THE CLOUDS,” with engineer Evan Kaspar. They funnel all the strength and sweetness of those first four songs into a brilliant three-minute mantra about committing to one another and to this music.