Gilded strings fight their way through a misty master mix as Ilja Alexander’s new single and music video “Someday” starts to play. Soon in their wake, we hear the strikingly smoky voice of Mr. Alexander join their eager melody, intertwining and capturing our attention instantly. The chill-inducing harmonies are just beginning to catch fire at this juncture of the song, but already we’re trapped in their clutches like a tiny flower blossom in the palm of a strong hand, and though this pop singer/songwriter has proven himself capable of creating such magic in the past (see 2011’s poignant Hold On to Her for more), this latest release and sneak preview of his new album Nature could be some of his best work yet.
Visually speaking, there’s a lot for us to unpack in the music video for “Someday,” but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s overwhelming to any significant degree. Surreal colors and superimposed shots of Alexander’s performance collide with one another in what at first feels like a war of aesthetical rough edges, but inside of the song’s initial sixty seconds, the conflict mellows and becomes the perfect canvas atop which the soundtrack will illustrate our leading man’s emotions. It’s a bit artsy, and certainly more involved than most anything you’re going to see on the mainstream side of the dial this January, but that’s precisely what makes it such a fetching watch alongside the soundtrack it’s been so elegantly adorned with.
I absolutely love the production quality here, and while “Someday” is definitely a well-polished number (especially from an underground artist with little name-recognition outside of his native Great Britain), nothing about this track seems overdone nor overstated in the grander scheme of things. Alexander wants us to appreciate all of the detail in his sound – this much is clear – but what’s just as obvious as his attention to subtle intricacies is his desire to keep things as richly organic and unfiltered as possible from within the confines of four studio walls. It isn’t that he’s somehow breaking the mold with “Someday;” on the contrary, I think he’s trying to refine a really familiar model for making smart alternative pop music, thus making it his own in the process.
Although I was only just recently introduced to the works of Ilja Alexander, this single/music video combo has made me really interested in hearing more of his material in the future (starting with the upcoming album Nature). There are a lot of indie pop artists that are essentially chasing after the same aesthetical ideals Alexander is, but I can’t think of one off hand that has quite the postmodern presence he does in this latest release. He’s come a long way in the last nine years that have passed since his rookie LP, and if this single is any sort of an indication as to what he’s going to be doing with his sound in the 2020s, I’ll be happy to review whatever he comes up with in and out of the studio from here forward.
Jodi Marxbury