Since late March, Little Rock singer-songwriter Isaac Alexander has been quietly releasing music on YouTube.
The songs were recorded for Future Sanctuary, an album he'd hoped to release this spring and the follow-up to his excellent 2017 record Like a Sinking Stone. But with the covid-19 pandemic and social distancing measures scuttling the possibility of playing shows, Alexander decided to wait.
Watch Isaac Alexander’s video for “Prove the World Wrong” here:
"I don't go out and tour or anything, but when I put out a record I base it around some sort of release show," he says during a phone interview last week. "When venues shut down, that really wasn't an option."
Still, he had these tunes and he wanted to share them, so he started making videos (the singles are also streaming on Spotify and Apple Music).
The gentle, Americana-tinged, Wilco-meets-Randy Newman tracks were written and recorded long before our current situation, but they each seem perfectly apt for these times.
"Prove the World Wrong" wasn't planned to be on the forthcoming album, Alexander says, but it was the first video he released.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8onTGMOl8M]
"It really started with that song. It was really a whim, but I felt compelled to share something. It made me feel like I was doing something ... It was kind of therapeutic to put it out there."
Set against what looks like old NASA footage that connects beautifully with the song's blissful tempo, weepy steel guitar and imagery of space, "Prove the World Wrong" is a soothing, reassuring testament to the power of love that begins with Alexander singing:
They say that it's impossible
They say it can't be done
I say we prove the whole world wrong
and love everyone
"Human" features gorgeous strings from Geoffrey Robson, associate conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.
Robson "came in with all kinds of melodies and harmonies" and worked closely with Jason Weinheimer, who recorded and engineered the album at Fellowship Hall Sound, Alexander says.
On the song, Alexander sings of the beauty, pain and mystery of the human condition in a way that carries added weight nowadays. At one point the narrator longs to be magical so that he could cast a spell and save the person he loves, but realizes it's futile; he's "just a man/only a man ... ."
The video features footage from what appears to be a nature show from the '60s or early '70s. By the end, it might be a good idea to have a few tissues handy.
The piano-based "Only in Real Life" ambles somnambulantly through a hazy dreamscape as the video shows waves crashing, volcanoes erupting and clips from what could have been a natural science documentary.
Horns and piano punctuate "Sick of Everything," and the video uses midcentury images of American suburban sprawl.
Alexander, who co-founded alternative country heroes Big Silver, says he didn't want to use images of himself in the videos, and instead turned to older, public-domain footage. They have a fuzzy, vintage feel and evoke educational films shown on a reel-to-reel projector in a darkened junior high classroom circa 1980.
Alexander hopes to have Future Sanctuary out by July. In the meantime, he'll keep sharing videos from the project.
"I'm planning on doing some more and am toying around with what the next one will be," he says.
Oh, and music videos aren't the only things he has been creating lately.
He and Brad Williams of The Salty Dogs have teamed up as The Eulogy Brothers and have been recording cover songs and posting them on Facebook.
So far, they've done versions of "So Sad to Watch Good Love Go Bad" by the Everly Brothers; two tracks by the Louvin Brothers — "Bald Knob, Arkansas" and the hymn "He Can Be Found" — a tender, slowed down version of Buddy Holly's "Learning the Game" and Connie Francis' "My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own," with more on the way.
"Brad is kind of the mastermind in putting these songs together," Alexander says. "They're songs we both love. He'll bang out a track and I'll sing on top of it."
Weekend on 05/07/2020