Today marks the release of “I’m Not Here”, the junior full-length album from Alex Izenberg. A collection of beguiling love songs, tender heartache, despair and confusion, “I’m Not Here” lays Alex bare, heart on his sleeve, and serves as a peek into the mind of one of LA’s most enigmatic songwriters.
To mark its release, Alex has shared a technicolor, animated video for song “Our Love Remains,” the center-piece to the ten-track long player. To bring the song to life, Alex recruited Dave Longstreth—the principal force behind the Dirty Projectors—who composed and arranged strings and woodwinds for several of the album’s tracks.
Alex on “Our Love Remains”:
“This song was a way of making a light shine in the mere darkness of 21st century life.”
Like his debut, 2016’s homespun Harlequin, and its ambitious 2020 follow-up Caravan Château, Alex Izenberg’s new album “I’m Not Here” inhabits the shaggy, world-weary mode of artists like Harry Nilsson, John Lennon, Randy Newman, and Lou Reed.
Alex on “Ivory”: I don’t know if it’s as much of a story as me trying to tell a story, because I don’t consider myself to be a storyteller like Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, but I guess it was me kind of going for that. It could be interpreted in different ways, depending on what your mood is, but I think it kind of can be interpreted as a fancy couple going out and how they’re not really in love but they’re still together. And then “real love will stone you” at the end of the chorus can be interpreted as them finding out they’re not in love. I was kind of going for a “Best of My Love” Eagles kind of vibe. That song I think is about the singer just being hopelessly in love with somebody and just telling her she gets the best of his love. Lyrically it’s not quite the same but the vibe I was going for.
“Ivory” is the third single off of Alex’s forthcoming studio album, “I’m Not Here“, due out May 20th via Domino imprint Weird World.
With the help of producer Greg Hartunian, and swelling string and woodwind arrangements courtesy of Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth, Alex manages a paradoxical and visionary trick: he disappears completely while simultaneously revealing more of himself than ever before.
The Fat Angel Sings 