Spectreview: Alien Boy – Don’t Know What I Am

Released: August 20, 2021

Alternative Rock
(Jangle Rock)
(Emo)

-DEEP PINK-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“The way you make me feel won’t come around again”

I’ve been aware of Alien Boy ever since a friend of mine played me Sleeping Lessons and then proceeded to wear their T-shirt on stage at a show that night. Baader-Meinhof resultantly took over; it became hard not to notice their presence on a random sticker, a work playlist, a tweet flying across the timeline or a small mention in passing. Sleeping Lessons is a great record, but it was one I didn’t spend time deconstructing the way I do habitually. I knew they worked a similar dynamic to a lot of friends’ bands, infusing a bright emo edge into ‘80s-based jangly melodies. And yet Don’t Know Who I Am ends up being the first record by the Portland band that I’ve spent time with, which is fortuitous for me considering how sharply they’ve honed what’s made them so special.

It’s not that their formula is all that unique; at this point I’ve heard countless bands attempt a raucous, guitar-based marriage between nostalgic comfort and bottomless searching. It’s that they do it convincingly, source-like, as if they were paradoxical masters of a craft designed around being eternally unformed. The record doesn’t quite kick out the gate the way “Somewhere Without Me” blew open Sleeping Lessons, but the four-song stretch between “The Way I Feel” and “Heartache” build in a more satisfying fashion. The sound is also slightly thinner and muddier, but that lends a certain crisp autumnal feel that fits the band well. A general buoyancy presents itself in how several songs lean into faster tempos and forego the minor key; some tracks, like “Nothing’s Enough” and the stellar, Cure-like “Something Better,” state their cases joyfully. Part of the magic trick of good emo is to sound like you’re having fun being miserable, and on Don’t Know Who I Am Alien Boy feel like they’re doing exactly that.

Sonia Weber continues to be the band’s crux, although where previously she provided a fount of dissatisfaction and doubt against the band’s moody din (as she continues to do here), her words lean far more romantic. She catalyzes the feeling of new love on the sunny “Dear Nora,” the candlelit “The Way I Disappoint You” and on “Seventeen” (the latter with a guitar line pulled straight from Johnny Marr’s playbook); she counters that rush with a dose of reality in “The Way I Feel” and “Ache #2”; she brings that feeling to its unbearable, precarious edge on “How Do I Think When Yr Asleep?” and “Nothing’s Enough.” Perhaps that rush is what gives Don’t Know What I Am its lifting power, but it certainly feels like a record steeped in a fresh, unbridled passion. It summons the iconography of a lettered jacket reeking of cigarette smoke, or a junky car parked on a side street, or a line of trees dying in slow motion; times where the nauseating pull of infatuation could throw you thrillingly off-balance, where the feeling hits so strong that it leaves an imperfect imprint in your memory.

Recommended for paying too much attention to read receipts.