Alien Boy’s origin story sounds ripped from a Seth Rogen film. Terrified of starting a band, Sonia Weber took mushrooms with a friend and, somewhere along the trip, determined that’s exactly why she should do it. She’s come a long way since then, releasing Alien Boy’s third studio album, You Wanna Fade?, last month — a project that holds the band’s love for ’90s culture in high esteem.
While promoting the record, the Alien Boy singer/guitarist doesn’t pull back from mentioning how much Third Eye Blind’s self-titled and Siamese Dream informed the songs, able to recite mass amounts of Smashing Pumpkins lore after listening to a six-hour Bandsplain podcast during recording. “I love those records, but I was listening to Greg Sage’s Sacrifice (For Love) a lot while we were recording, and I got really into that right before we left,” she tells AP. “I loved how dark and dramatic it was. I feel like it really matched my vibe at the time, and it made me feel like I could and should be dramatic, too.”
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The result swings for the same catchiness and splendor as the songs that landed on 120 Minutes. The melodies are brighter, the lyrics angstier, and the big, fuzzy guitars more abundant. “I really wanted to write some epic guitar solos on this album, and who writes more epic guitar solos than Thin Lizzy?” A.P. Fiedler says. “I chose Black Rose because they shred, but there’s also a pop sensibility to most of the songs.” Alien Boy share that in common. They couch heartbreak in giant hooks, turning loneliness (“Pictures of You”), desire (“Cold Air”), and devastation (“I Broke My World”) into blinding catharsis.
Their ’90s influences also shine in their creative direction, giving us a grainy, lost VHS-looking video to explain the albums that shaped You Wanna Fade?. Dive in below.
