Opening with baggy drums and a pair of crestfallen guitar melodies, Christian Alexander’s new single, I Hate You, I Love You, represents a time of upheaval in the musician’s life. Living in London but having grown up in Preston, England, Alexander found himself making the move back home amid a sense of general anxiety.
Deliberately showing its raw edges, like a fabric, the same signal of authenticity you may find on the inside seam of a pair of heavily worn selvage jeans, Alexander’s single was recorded at home, in the moment. The result is a performance that conveys a need for self release, and a strength of feeling that would be difficult to capture in a more polished environment. As he reaches the song’s chorus, Christian’s voice cracks, emotionally buckling beneath the strain, his truth no longer something objective, and instead a messy confusion of his contradictory feelings.
Alexander’s lo-fi, textural approach has garnered attention from the likes of The Face, Pigeons and Planes, Highsnobiety, Complex, Hypebeast and musicians including BlackPlastic favourite Mura Masa. Describing the experience of creating I Hate You, I Love You, Christian says:
‘I was in an anxious state, a pattern of feeling good and then getting anxious about something. I wrote the guitar and recorded the drums and then had an idea for the melody, but I was too scared to actually write anything. I didn’t want to put myself out there too much, I didn’t want my overthinking to take a hold of what I was writing, so at first I backed away from the idea. Then I thought fuck this. I went back to the studio and I remember not caring, just letting everything out. That’s where this song came from, with the “why do I try, why do I care” line.’