Rob Alexander is Back With Hot New Single

The beats are soft but strong enough to elicit a reaction out of us within seconds of making contact for the first time. The melody is faint but certain and true to the form of the percussion behind it; the vocal, soon to join us, is the definitive linchpin in this romantically charged intro to “Instant Sex,” the new single from Rob Alexander. We’re right in the palm of the singer’s hands before he’s ever uttered a line to us, and as we get closer to the warmth of the track’s main harmony, it soon becomes truly impossible to break with the gaze of the instrumentation as it unfurls before us. Alexander is an aural hypnotist here, and resisting his advances is undeniably futile. 

With a singer like this one in the mix, it would be understandable if the instruments weren’t exactly on-par with what he can do with nothing more than a microphone, but not the case with “Instant Sex.” Here, Rob Alexander is taking some time out to flex on the melodic end with anything at his disposal, and with the powerhouse players he has adding to his performance in the recording studio, I would fault him if he didn’t. There’s so much to harvest out of a session filled with as much creative heat as this one so obviously was, but luckily for us, the man whose name is on the cover of Dream out Loud wasn’t about to step away from the booth until every sonic stone was upturned. 

Alexander’s lyrical content in “Instant Sex” touches on more than unabashed lust for the human body; personally, I think it alludes to a desire to be exposed that isn’t the easiest to poetically break down without a lot of metaphorical imagery on hand to drive home the emotion behind the action. He doesn’t indulge too much in anything that would be predictable in the eyes of the average contemporary music buff, but there’s also a hint of classical pop musicianship countering the more experimental components of the song. This isn’t about running an artistic identity off the rails into new territory; it’s about having fun and exploring what he can do when there are no limitations, aesthetical or otherwise, placed before what he’s creating. 

I’ve been writing about indie music for many years now, and I can confidently say I’ve never heard nor reviewed another artist quite like Rob Alexander. His latest single in “Instant Sex” makes me want to finally see him live and in-person as this pandemic-sanctioned dry spell on the concert circuit comes to a highly-anticipated end, and more than this, I’m all the more intrigued by the notion of hearing him try a more rhythm-focused approach to his next album (or even just an EP in the near future). The hype he’s been attracting with Dream out Loud is no joke, and whether it be “Instant Sex” or another one of the record’s best songs, they all stand to confirm how important Rob Alexander has become to his genre and scene in recent years. 

Mindy McCall