{"id":6556,"date":"2017-10-03T18:48:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T23:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/?p=6556"},"modified":"2017-10-03T18:48:54","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T23:48:54","slug":"alexz-johnsons-a-stranger-time-a-subtle-and-mature-evolution-endeavoursmedia-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/?p=6556","title":{"rendered":"Alexz Johnson\u2019s \u201cA Stranger Time\u201d A Subtle And Mature Evolution — EndeavoursMedia.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an interesting album review by EndeavousMedia.com<\/a>. Instead of track by track it takes you through Alexz’s vision of a few songs and of the entire album as a whole.<\/p>\n

\nSource<\/a><\/p>\n

Alexz Johnson\u2019s \u201cA Stranger Time\u201d A Subtle And Mature Evolution
\nBy Dan McPeake<\/p>\n

One would be hard-pressed to find an artist as successfully independent as Alexz Johnson. If that name sounds familiar, you are not alone. Although Johnson got her TV with lead roles in \u201cSo Weird\u201d and \u201cInstant Star\u201d and films such as \u201cFinal Destination 3\u201d, music has always been first love; after seeing her show on Thursday night it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n

This was my second time seeing Johnson perform, the first was back in 2012 in Vancouver following the release of her EP \u201cSkipping Stone\u201d. While stylistically the albums are similar, Johnson has refined and updated both her sound and personal style and has turned down the pop overtones and increased the rock influences. Evidence of that fact lies in the very track \u201cBreathe\u201d. It would probably surprise folks to find out that that track was inspired by Prince; although isn\u2019t nearly as outrageous as a tune from The Man In Purple, Johnson states that she was \u201cdelving into his work\u201d explaining how \u201cmusic is so personal\u201d and that she likes to pull nuances from a lot of different artists. Let\u2019s be real though, it is probably easier to find to find a group of artists that haven\u2019t been influenced by Prince, versus those who have. His legend and reach was quite wide-ranging.<\/p>\n

\u201cBreathe\u201d itself is a great lead-off track, an upbeat riff with poignant, accurate lyrics in which Johnson acknowledges that she has to \u201cwalk this path alone\u201d, no doubt a nod to being fiercely independent and doing nearly everything herself. (Indeed, when I sent an email asking for an interview, I did not get a reply from a publicist or a label representative; I heard from Johnson herself).<\/p>\n

If \u201cBreathe\u201d is an appropriate lead-off than \u201cSay Goodbye\u201d is equally a fantastic closer. The song also comes with an interesting, if sombre anecdote. Johnson and her crew were in the studio getting ready to record the song and when her sound engineer was just about to hit the red button to initiate recording, they received word that Canadian music legend Leonard Cohen had passed away. They subsequently did the song in one take. The song is not about Cohen per se, rather it is an ode to saying goodbye and how we all must and need to move on, however tough it may be.<\/p>\n

Two other songs of note are \u201cRight Now\u201d, the fourth track which inspired the album\u2019s title \u201cA Stranger Time\u201d. Although not a political person \u2013 Johnson flatly states that she \u201cmakes music\u201d \u2013 she does admit and acknowledge that we are in strange times and \u201cRight Now\u201d is a literal music manifestation of the times today. As Johnson explained, she avoided specificity as everyone has their own version.<\/p>\n

Even with all that taken into consideration, Johnson says her personal favourite track is the album\u2019s third entitled \u201cAftermath\u201d. In a way, it also touches on the overall theme of \u201cA Stranger Time\u201d, that of time. Johnson freely acknowledges that it is a bit of a darker song that touches on regret. It \u201cdoesn\u2019t shine a big happy light\u201d she says, and goes to lament how some artists, in fact people in general, are in ways afraid to write and talk about regret and the pain that we go through, even though that is what shapes us in many respects.<\/p>\n

To sum up the album, well I\u2019ll leave to Alexz herself \u201cA Stranger Time is a live-off-the-floor experience, it\u2019s not hyper-produced, hyper-electronic, it\u2019s just very raw\u201d. Amen to that. There is such beauty in simplicity.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an interesting album review by EndeavousMedia.com<\/a>. Instead of track by track it takes you through Alexz’s vision of a few songs and of the entire album as a whole. Source Alexz Johnson\u2019s \u201cA Stranger Time\u201d A Subtle And Mature Evolution By Dan McPeake One would be hard-pressed to find an artist as successfully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[967,72,498],"class_list":["post-6556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-news","tag-a-stranger-time","tag-article","tag-review"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Pf1c-1HK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6557,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556\/revisions\/6557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}