Emby Alexander

For nearly a decade, Emby Alexander have sharpened their teeth in that rebellious scene, carving their own path through the desert. And on Emby Alexander’s latest, SOARS ERA (due July 24th via Earth Libraries), the experimental psych pop band powerfully express that idiosyncratic outsiderdom in a way that simultaneously welcomes listeners into the fold.

A native Phoenician, frontman Michael Alexander grew up in punk and garage bands, and utilizes that scrappy DIY mentality in music that stretches into ethereal majesty. The compositions of SOARS ERA similarly blend seeming opposites in their recording, utilizing taut technological instrumentation and loose human improvisation in equal doses. Drawing from the new wave and no wave traditions of bands like Joy Division, Talking Heads, and Suicide, Alexander and bandmates Kyle Grabski, Austin Harshman, and Jeremy Lentz then explode the results like fireworks in the night sky.

Lead single “Dye It Gold” exemplifies that experimental ethos both in its composition and in its recording process. Alexander first wrote the song at a park picnic table under the big sky while on tour somewhere between Idaho and Montana, and sanded off the rough edges while on a friend’s roof in San Francisco--and the track appropriately reaches for the skies with its burnished guitar corkscrews and tightly knotted harmonies.