by Zach Zollo (@zach_zollo)
Finding the perfect name is an arduous process. Well, at least for most songwriters: it’s an inherent talent for Sonia Weber. Take her band Alien Boy. They lift their name from a Wipers song, which pays respect to the punk heritage of their home city of Portland, but the name also captures a particular shade of the queer experience that Weber knows too well, and articulates so gracefully. It’s an emotional state where internal anxieties and a sense of “alienation” creates a deep longing for romantic connection, where the validation of others lessens the burden of finding your identity. Don’t Know What I Am, the band’s latest LP, is another perfect name. The record holds Weber’s established perspective throughout, affirming the confession of the title; but in a testament to the love we receive from others, it embraces gratitude and sunshine in ways that lead to the band’s strongest proclamation yet.
“The Way I Feel” opens the record with the trademarks of Alien Boy’s guitar-pop: aquatic jangle with an edge of distortion, Weber’s yearning, nasally vocals, and riffs and solos so hot you could sear foie gras. Lyrically, the song performs an intricate balancing act. For one, the fears of rekindling a relationship take root in the song’s soil - so much has changed between the song’s subjects since they’ve last spoken, yet a connection remains from having known their earlier selves. There’s so much warmth in the delivery of “the way you make me feel won’t come around again,” but preceded with how this love “hurts too much,” one can’t help but linger on the uncertainty between them. Like all great lead singles, it remains with you because of how it builds its layers from the ground up.
Following this excellent tone-setter, Don’t Know What I Am proceeds with songs that present the different layers of this single’s foundation. Perhaps most pronounced are the songs of nostalgia, those that cherish times when love was more formative due to the nature of our youth. These are songs like “Dear Nora,” where Weber passionately expresses how she was loved in the ways she always wanted, or “Seventeen,” where the pining for an age of innocence places the listener into their own wide-eyed past. There is also a pronounced sense of empowerment throughout these songs. You notice it most instrumentally; taking their Britpop, power pop, shoegaze, and emo influences to new heights, the band sound their most singular and dynamic in an ever-growing landscape of sub-genre subterfuge.
With “Something Better,” the band gives us the strongest song on the record, and one of their greatest songs yet. Taking its time to establish its groove, it builds on a chiming, La’s inspired riff and a rhythm section that flows like a river of honey. Recalling the sound of Flying Nun Records as much as the spirit of PNW indie, the track is blissful and delicious. Once Weber starts speaking to herself, she captures the essence of her dreams, the essence of the queer feeling that fills the heart. It's a song both triumphant and anthemic, an aspirational ode to what you can make for yourself if you set your mind to it.
This leaves us with songs reveling in that third layer: the layer of uncertainty, doubt, and fear. Songs like “Ache #2,” where ringing guitars blanket you in a wintering chill, or “Memory Vault,” where the reminiscence provokes our struggle for sustainment. Nowhere is this more present than on the album closer “The Way I Disappoint You,” one of the most harrowing songs Weber has written, and a summation of everything that defines the band’s core. It’s a song that thrives in the little moments of affection shared between two people - mainly physical touch, and how someone’s appreciation of your body lifts the psychological weight of dysmorphia. Weber compels through revelation, presenting how their own loss of identity and lack of understanding in themself has led to feeling like they let others down. If we aren’t what we believe we are for others... then what are we?
We all want to make someone proud. We want to be what others see ourselves as. When we’re lost in our own depression, our anxiety, the feelings of being an “alien boy,” the support of others - the strength they give us, what they see in us, the love they bring - is what powers us through. It’s what gives us pride in ourselves. Now, I say this with full sincerity: Alien Boy make me proud to be queer. Rarely does a rock band with an unparalleled sound, sensational sense of songcraft, and nucleus of queer experience create a record as impactful, as important, as unwaveringly assured as Don’t Know What I Am. Alien Boy has done it, creating an album that’s destined to be a formative album of queer youth, an album that acts as a guiding light when it is needed the most. It already has an ideal name, but for the right person at the right time, Don’t Know What I Am just might be their ideal album.