You can try pigeonholing Alex Wellkers’ music. It’s just going to look and sound foolish, however, once anyone else hears him. His latest solo release famous now does a wildly impressive job of building on its preceding work without ever abandoning or else compromising the strengths that brought him initial attention. “Get This Far” will do more than hold your attention, the piano playing is frequently exquisite, but it’s the vocal that stands out the most for me.
His singing threads a needle through a handful of potentially thorny emotions. This is impressive enough, but his mastery of utilizing his voice to embody some of those emotions puts “Gets This Far” on a higher pedestal. The guitar during “What Keeps Me Alive” fires staccato salvos of various duration and only occasionally unleashes more. It has simmering, barely contained restraint throughout much of the track that makes for a gripping initial listen, but the track holds up under repeated plays.
He goes big with the song “Believe in What You Do Here” and his reach is more than equal to his grasp. It isn’t the only moment like this during the collection, but I hear an almost prog-rock ambition here much more than any other aesthetic. It manifests itself in recognizable ways, of course, such as the hard rock crunch of the guitar, and the classical echoes conjured by the violin. Wellkers once again communicates the lyrics with a wealth of emotion.
“Dread Love Passion” is a song with many faces. There’s crashing hard rock, deft switches in the song’s tempo, and unexpected stops, to name a few. It’s a bit more structurally challenging than the album’s other “rock” fare but no less capable of establishing a connection with listeners. Synthesizer touches in the song “Satisfied” further strengthen Wellker’s progressive bonafides. They aren’t the only nods in that direction, however. “Satisfied”, like its predecessors, never settles for one direction and moves through hard rock and other moods with even more power to bulldozer listeners than its predecessor.
“I See You Give In” is a hard-charging rocker much of the time, though Wellkers can’t resist embellishing the song with synth flourishes. These are particularly common during the song’s second half. It’s one of the album’s fiercest lyrics, as well, and one that Wellkers delivers with biting conviction. “Now I See Now I Regret” starts with a rave-up of sorts before launching into its up-tempo verses. There’s an undeniable punk influence in this one, probably secondhand from his grunge reference points, but on target. It’s a great closer for famous now and the back-to-basics attack underlines his command of the genre’s fundamentals. He springs a final surprise on us with the song’s brief coda.
It’s the small brushstrokes that matter here, as elsewhere. The coming-of-age tone in Wellkers’ lyrics, a valediction to childhood innocence now long gone, extends to the rest of the album. It’s empowered with the crackling energy of youth but a sharp intelligence as well. famous now is engaged with the world and Alex Wellkers is far from done.
Troy Johnstone