The new album from Alex Izenberg, Caravan Château, out on Friday via Domino, beguiles. It is a shameless throwback to the kind of thing we heard on this side of the Atlantic in the Seventies, even as it maintains a fairly impressive level of craftsmanship like the work of any number of British musicians from the same era. A mix of pensive ruminations and faintly jaunty numbers, the record is one of the better surprises this listener has heard all summer.
"Requiem" and "Sister Jade" seem like the kind of things we'd have heard from Al Stewart had he hooked up with "Crackerbox Palace"-era George Harrison, while "Disraeli Woman" is more straightforward somehow, a neat approximation of Seventies AM gold filtered through a Robert Wyatt-prism. Izenberg makes all of this work, even more so than bands with similar ambitions (Foxygen, Alex Cameron) who also ransacked the past. While this Alex is clearly looking to an earlier era, he's imbuing this stuff with enough of his own style to make the material seem wildly distinctive and original.
"Saffron Glimpse" and "Lady", like a few things here on Caravan Château, sound a bit like Damon Albarn in his "Tender" years, but Alex Izenberg is more interested in crafting something that stands far, far outside the mainstream. In that sense, the compositions here are accessible, yes, but so layered and emotionally complex that my simple recitation of some points of comparison is a loser's game. Regardless, this album is quietly magical and entirely unique in terms of what we're hearing elsewhere in the summer of 2020.
Caravan Château is out on Friday via Domino.
More details on Alex Izenberg via the official Facebook page.
[Photo: Giraffe Studios]