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FOUR SONGS • Alexi Murdoch
People everywhere are talking about the underground growing success of Alexi Murdoch. A buzz is such a curious thing in the arts. It's related to, and powerful like, the curious power of momentum in sports, how a few key plays can reverse the tide of a game, and the underdog becomes suddenly more likely to win, because they have seized the moment. Similarly, first a few people talk about you, and soon people are talking about how people are talking about you.
Although a lover and writer of words, Alexi Murdoch didn't seriously believe that music would be his path. Scottish born and London bred, he followed a girl to L.A., and in 2002 he decided to give music a chance. He was approached by a management group after gigging about three months. He says in a radio interview that there was one person there who got what he was doing, so he brought in his EP, four songs, when it was done, a demo. There he heard the line that he's now heard many times since: "We really love what you do, and we'd love the whole world to hear it. We just need one song to get in the door…" Nashville is replete with these visionary types, in fact. When the record man put the disc in his computer rather than the stereo and stared at the screen as it played, Alexi realized he was watching the counter, seeing how long it took to get to the chorus, et cetera. Such was the birth of his decision to go the indie route.
Who knew that the song "Orange Sky," at a whopping six minutes running time, would hit tons of Radio Top Ten lists at year end, that it would be the number One song at trend setting WXPN in Philly and WTMD in Baltimore, and second at Austin's KGSR. With over 40,000 artists in its roster, how could it have become the biggest selling record of 2003 at the indie leader CDBaby, with over 15,000 units?
How, indeed. It's a very pretty, very contemplative EP, lots of space. Even the EP artwork is mostly space--there's a partial photo of a boy on a sidewalk, a b&w photo of Alexi in a t-shirt, smiling with his guitar on, at the mic, a few credits. The inside two panels are black, with the words "there's nothing wrong with space" on the left panel.
We think it's real good, we like it. More importantly, a lot of influential radio people think it's great, and airplay is making four songs a national story. It's a very interesting scenario in the "new music business," and it's more than worth a look, a listen and at a mere seven bucks, you should definitely pick up this EP here, and become part of the buzz. Alexi Murdoch's here to stay, and we look forward to interviewing him if he's still within reach, when his first full length recording appears later in 2004. • FG
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