Music |
Four Songs
Alexi Murdoch
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Rock
You may have heard "Orange Sky" on an alternative radio station. Or as the background music for a Honda commercial. Or at the end of an episode of "Dawson’s Creek." Or on the "Garden State" soundtrack.
But you haven’t seen posters for Alexi Murdoch in a record store. Or seen his video on MTV. Or read about his CD’s meteoric climb up the charts.
There’s a reason Alexi Murdoch is both sort-of-familiar and equally unknown — he’s taken total control of his music and hasn’t even thought about loosening his grip. He released his CD on his own, with no label involved: four songs for $7.99. And in just a year, his 21 minute-long CD has sold more than 20,000 copies — kind of a record.
Alexi Mudoch is London born and Scottish bred, long and lean and curly-haired and bearded — young women (and women not so young) swoon. In performance, he has a reverence for his songs that can come across as intense self-involvement, and he does not hesitate to call for silence from loudmouths and chatters. Mostly, he gets it.
What is it about Alexi Murdoch? If you’re familiar with Nick Drake , you’ve heard the fountainhead from which he springs — not, he says, that he heard of Drake until a few years ago, when his style was already formed. And there’s a big David Gray influence at work here too.
And the self-promotion? For a kid who never thought much about music as a career until someone heard him sing on a camping trip and asked to be his manager, he’s slicker than snail snot — in, of course, an un-slick-looking way. The cover photo of his CD is a cropped picture: Murdoch as a small boy in a coat with sleeves too long for him. His website confronts you with home movies of Murdoch as a kid diving from a rock, on a boat with his mother and his siblings, and, just because, an orange sky. Right: he’s the wholesome one, the good son, the loving brother. Sexy but accessible. An instant friend.
And all that’s in the music.
The CD opens with a few strums of a guitar, then:
Pretty pretty on the fence
In your pretty moments of innocence
You do not see what I see inside
The quiet heart you’re trying to hide
See? He thinks you’re better than you think you are. He gets under your fear. He’s your biggest fan. Very savvy. Very.
What you won’t get until you actually listen to Alexi Murdoch’s music is what’s not there. His real subject is space. And God knows there’s a lot of it in his music. Acoustic guitar, a few words…then silence. Space morphs into time, and time becomes what you make of it, and in this way, you are sucked into Alexi Murdoch’s music as a co-creator. His songs aren’t what you hear in them, they’re what you do with them.
"Orange Sky" is beloved for just this reason. How can you possibly resist a refrain like this?
In your love, my salvation lies
In your love, my salvation lies
I include the repetition because there’s a lot of repetition in this six-minute song. Lyrics become mantras. They wear you down. You surrender. And this too creates space.
Somewhere in here I should give you a consumer warning: Once you start playing this CD, you are doomed. It gets glued to your machine. You play it over and over again. You tell people about it. You check the website to find out when a full CD will be released or if Alexi — you’re on a first-name basis with him by now — is touring anywhere near you.
This is embarrassing. You’re a grown-up. He’s a kid making music that’s obviously derivative. Then you remember that Nick Drake’s been dead for 30 years. And that David Gray’s new music is not his best. And so you set aside your critic’s mind and give your heart to Alexi Murdoch who has, in just four songs, gladdened your heart and made you feel foolishingly optimistic.
It’s not too late to turn back. Consider yourself warned.
To buy "Four Songs" from Amazon.com, click here.
