Interview // Alex Izenberg

Photo by Giraffe Studios

Ahead of the release of his third record I’m Not Here out May 20th via Domino imprint Weird World, the curious and originative singer-songwriter Alex Izenberg reveals details of the album’s creation and some of the collaborations that helped shape the project.

How have your creative processes changed in the two years since the release of Caravan Château?

Well, to my awareness I’ve been more influenced by my imagination and mind rather than by songs about love. I’m getting closer to making the unconscious conscious with these songs as they may make less sense to the mind and more sense to the heart. It’s been a slow but steady progression, slowly veering away from more romantic songs.

Your music has a grand spirit to the lyricism and arrangement. Does the songwriting process develop for you beginning in a full-bodied way or are the stems slowly added once a harmony or guitar part or piano composition are fleshed out?

I started these songs as home recordings and then collaborated with Dave Longstreth on string arrangements and then worked on the songs in a proper studio with my producer Greg Hartunian over the winter of 2020/21. They were partly inspired by my dog Larks dying earlier that year which was devastating. I turned to song and music as a way to lick my wounds and reconcile with mixed emotions and feelings I was having at that time.

You worked with Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors for the new record. What types of things did Dave bring to the new set of songs? What do you connect most with in his art?

He brought emotion above anything else, I think his arrangements are wonderful and have an almost Debussy feel to them sometimes. I’m a big Dirty Projectors fan. I listen to “Stillness Is The Move” almost every day. It’s such an uplifting and powerful song. I think David is a really special person who has impeccable taste for composing strings that’s unlike most everyone else.

For the new record's first single "Egyptian Cadillac," you worked with the great Giraffe Studios again for a music video. How do you combine creative visions with them for videos for your work?

Nicky and Juliana Giraffe are good friends of mine and “Egyptian Cadillac” was our most collaborative work yet. I presented the concept for the shot of my mask and lasers and the candle shot and they brought it to life and worked a video around it that I feel turned out fantastic. My producer is Nicky’s partner Greg Hartunian, whom I’ve known since I was about 11.

Do you envision a cinematic component to your songs while you're writing them?

I actually didn’t. I really just did it naturally. Though I think it would be important to say that every night while I fall asleep I listen to a very cinematic playlist of Ryuichi Sakamoto compositions from his score for the Leo DiCaprio movie The Revenant. I think Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of my favorite artists; that soundtrack has a very deep emotional core which I resonate with.

The record seems more intimate and personal than your earlier work. What were the methods you took to become a more introspective songwriter? What were the challenges to becoming more transparent with feelings that hadn't been displayed or revealed publicly through your art?

It’s all been a natural unfolding. The main reason I think I became more introspective is because music’s role in my life has become more important in my daily life since I released Harlequin in 2016. Listening to and writing music has become a way I can quell outside disturbances whether it be a thought or a thing. It’s like a shield for my mind which is very important in an age where we literally look at screens (controlled by God knows what) all day.

Photo by Giraffe Studios

You don't often perform your music live. Are there specific reasons why you defer from bringing your work out onto the stage? Is performing something that affects or inspires your songwriting processes?

There’s no specific reason. I love performing! I also love home life too. I think when one plays live versions of songs they might hear things they could have done differently or hear little nuances which can be applied to new songs. The thing that inspires my songwriting process the most is the present moment, whether it be pleasant or painful.

The mask on the album cover symbolizes the freedom a disguise allows one to shapeshift identities. How did you approach writing this record with this sense of being transformative and indeterminate with your idea of self-image?

I abandoned all images of myself completely, only seeing the one true self: the joker, if you will. I’ve continued to just delve deeper into myself as an artist and what that actually means from moment to moment, and I often find it really for me just means being a music lover and finding security in music, whether it’s listening or writing. When I think of the album cover for I’m Not Here, in a sense it’s a way of calling myself non-existent due to the fact that everything is always in flux and I think it’s impossible for anyone person to know who they are completely, to know who’s behind their eyes.