Currently touring with Jasper In The Company Of Others, the opening act in the Miles of Two Styles tour at the moment is a young singer hailing from Worcester and performing acoustically on guitar with just a keyboard for occasional support.
Usually Alex would play with his band, so this represents a nice departure and a chance to strip back the production from his music. The intimate surroundings of the Zed Music Cafe are perfect for Alex performing like this and he charmed the audience, getting lots of new admirers in the process.
Alex performed songs from his EP, ‘Gone Away’, and having bought a copy I can tell you that it is an impressive six-song collection, perfectly mixing the delicate and soulful with more upbeat rockier vibes. Having listened to Alex’s impressive life performance in the intimate surrounds of Zed, it would be nice now to see him perform with his band as both styles seem completely in keeping and natural with the songs on offer. I’m hoping to find him as a nice surprise at a festival this Summer. On the night, Alex came across as someone very comfortable with live performance and calmly chatted as he tuned his guitar to perfection and ran through his songs. He looked like he was having a lot of fun and that was infectious.
Alex comes from a musical family and his style is born of the wide variety of music his parents played at home ranging from Motown to Led Zeppelin. Like many singer songwriters, he started by playing guitar at primary school but only started to get serious when he started to concentrate on music instead of sport. There is a similarity to Newton Faulkner when Alex plays acoustically and like Newton, Alex likes to experiment with new sounds and musicians from all over the world. His lyrics seem very personal with a certain degree of profundity. Alex’s likes to say these are life songs and that feels very true when you hear him play live.
