Jarrett Fuller

Music has a way of invading a moment, becoming intertwined with a memory, forever serving as its soundtrack.

Driving home from a day in the city with A; slightly buzzed from the too-late-in-the-day coffees we grabbed at the Stumptown in front of the Ace Hotel before heading home. On the way home, the sunset stretches across the horizon — the skyline behind us, the mountains before us. We have another hour of light thanks to the long summer evenings.

The headlights pass quickly; the crisp Fall air seeps into the opened windows along with a feeling of possibility. The newly-orange leaves glow against the dawn sky, falling slowly to the ground. M is in the seat next to me, singing along to the music, smiles on both of our faces, our lives stretched out before us.

Walking back to my apartment after catching a solo film in the theater down the street. My small college town strangely quiet for a Saturday night. I’m struck by the stillness and feel hopeful for the first time in a while.

The room is dark save the glow of my laptop screen. It’s pushing 2:00am and I’m in my room in Nashville where I’ve been all summer for an internship. Feeling lonely, I’d gotten in the habit of staying up too late, the sound of the cicadas out my window mix with the soft music coming from my laptop speakers.

Washing the dishes at the end of a busy day. The window is open to clear the smoke from cooking, letting the late February air blow into our small Brooklyn apartment, washing it in a cool chill. Our 6-month old baby sleeping softly in the next room providing a momentary reprieve from the non-stop pace of life recently. We wouldn’t know the world would shut down next month from a pandemic.

The soundtrack is always the same: Alexander Biggs’s album, Hit or Miss. Yet, this cannot be true, for this album came out in 2021, long after each of these memories. I do vividly remember hearing the first single, Madeline, for the first time on a February evening in 2020 while washing the dishes. And I remember a flood of memories returning to the surface, as if this song, which I was hearing for the first time, had always been there with me.

When the whole album was released the following year, I felt this sensation again, as if these songs had soundtracked my life, both small moments and monumental events. It sounded familiar, lived in. I dug through my music library, trying to figure out what it reminded me of, what other songs could have really been playing at different moments. I never found them.

Biggs’s music fits squarely in the sweet spot of a genre I’ve been drawn too for my whole life; what my partner and children call my “sad-boy music.” It’s simple instrumentation, maybe a guitar or piano (with the occasional swelling strings or electronic textures) and a vocal delivery I can only describe as melancholy. Earlier this year, Alexander Biggs’s new album, Stay with the Horses was released, continuing the sound he developed on Hit and Miss. Indeed, his range is small, the songs can blend from one to another. He stays in his lane. But I’m not complaining.

When I look at the songs I’ve listened to the most over the last few years, they tend to come from Alexander Biggs. Perhaps its a sense of false nostalgia — creating false memories and mis-remembrances. I’m grateful a new song can strike me as immediately familiar without being derivative. When I listen to them today, they’re doing something different: they’re working their way into my present, becoming the soundtrack of now.