Interview with Alexalone

By Maddy Lehr

Music Journalist

 

Recently, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with the lovely members of Alexalone during their third show of their April residency at Hotel Vegas. Alex Peterson, Sam Jordan and Andrew “Drewsky” Hulett played a captivating show that left me feeling utterly entranced. Before their set, we sat down to talk new music, old music and more.

 

Maddy: How has the residency been?

Sam: It’s been fun! It’s my first ever residency I’ve done. I did miss the last one, and from the videos it looked like y’all did a cool electronic set.

Drewsky: We’re so glad to have you back.

Sam: It’s been fun to host our friends and bands that we love and curate it. Yeah, it’s been cool.

Drewsky: Alex did a great job of each night having sort of a theme.

Alex: Yeah, I was going for theme nights.

Maddy: I love theme nights. That’s awesome!

Drewsky: So last week was the more electronic kind of vibe. Sam couldn’t be there so we did an improv electronic set. It was weird and fun. Tonight is kind of the heavier rock band, so we’re just playing like a normal set.

Maddy: So what are your inspirations? I know when I listen to you guys I hear Slint a lot. That’s something I definitely wanted to bring up.

Alex: Have you ever watched the Slint documentary? It’s on YouTube. It’s great, I mean, it’s like more than an hour and it’s just interviews with all of the people. It’s just so weird because you’re just like these people were literally children when they made this music. This is ridiculous. Yeah, Slint’s great.

Drewsky: I’m inspired by all of my friends and a few enemies.

Sam: I’m a big fan of Yo La Tengo. I think it has an influence on my drumming.

Alex: I really like Hum and Boris and bands like that.

Maddy: Does that kind of cross over into what you guys are listening to now?

Alex: Yeah, I mean I think we all listen to a bunch of different stuff which is nice.

Maddy: Follow up to that question, do you have any recommendations of what to listen to? Maybe local bands?

Alex: I’d just say all the bands that are in residency. That’s my easy answer.

Sam: Large Brush Collection. I’m really excited to see them next week. Also, tonight is going to be awesome with Never and New Strangers.

Drewsky: New Strangers is great. Not a local band, but I really like the band 22° Halo. They’re really good. They’re from Philly.

Maddy: This is usually a disliked question, but I always like to ask how you would describe your music. Usually there’s not a good answer.

Drewsky: I like it, I like the question. It’s a challenge.

Sam: Yeah, I would say the best way I could explain it is that there are points in which it’s heavy and there’s a lot of tones that are cool to hear. And then there are points in which it is very quiet and it’s also really pretty and it goes back and forth between those.

Maddy: That’s a good way to describe it though. I know what you mean.

Sam: It’s not all just heavy, it’s not all just pretty.

Drewsky: Dynamic.

Maddy: Do you guys have a favorite song to play live?

Sam: I like the song, it’s a new song, it’s called “Full Body Learning.” For me, it’s fun because it’s really technical, it’s long, it does a lot of different things and it’s really exhausting. But I like that it is all of those things.

Drewsky: You’re just running the whole time basically.

Sam: I’m actually just running the entire song. The drum part that happens, I have to keep the kick going on eighth notes. How long is that song?

Alex: It’s 12 minutes.

Sam: And the BPM is like 120 or 140. But I do get a break, like a measure long.

Alex: What about you Drewsky?

Drewsky: Maybe “All I Need” because on the record that is not announced there’s an organ on part of it, and I always think about the organ as I’m playing it.

Alex: I think I would say the song “Ruins” right now. Great song. It’s fun to play. I like that song.

Sam: It’s a good solo.

Maddy: My personal favorite off the latest album is “Black Rainbow,” so do you guys want to talk about that song a little bit?

Alex: That song started off as a Smith and Robot song, which is my old band. The song “Eavesdropper” is a cover of that band which is really silly. It kind of just didn’t really work out in that context. We tried it with Sam initially on drums and it was cool because it was able to work within this context. It’s pretty easy to play live because it’s a lot of strumming. You’re not playing a note or anything. It’s fun because everything gets to get a little goofy sometimes. Lyrically, it’s pretty much just about HRT and emotional aspects and dreams and stuff. It was originally more aggressive, but then it felt nice that it became more centered because there’s already a lot of distortion and feedback. Making it more personal felt better.

Maddy: It was on my On Repeat playlist on Spotify for a while. You guys kind of already answered this question, but I wanted to ask if there is anything new coming out.

Alex: Yeah, we don’t know when we’re going to announce this yet, but we have a record that’s going to come out in the second half of the year.

Drewsky: It’s going to sound really good. It’s got an organ on it. We’re going to play a bunch of it tonight. You get to see Sam running in “Full Body Learning.”

Sam: I’ll be exhausted.

Maddy: But it’ll be worth it!

Sam: Exactly.

Maddy: My last question is always something silly, so since it is Spring, what is everybody’s favorite flower?

Drewsky: Bluebonnet. If you go to Big Bend, like deep west Texas, they’re really hardy. They’re more purple.

Sam: Yeah, I also love the Bluebonnet. I wanted to think of a different one, and I was going to bring up the west Texas Bluebonnet because it’s longer.

Alex: If this was birds, I would’ve said mockingbird.

Sam: I like cardinals.

Drewsky: I saved a baby blue jay the other day. It fell from a tree and seemed to hit its head or something and got stuck in a yucca plant. I called the Animal Wildlife Center in Austin and they were like yeah if it was a fledgling it would be walking around but it was totally still. I brought it in, and they said it was going to be okay. They gave it some pain meds.

Maddy: Yay! We’ll give him some pain meds. He’ll be fine.