Love Anchor

Though the influences are numerous, Love Anchor has remained strikingly original, creating tender ballads comprised of simplistic lovelorn lyrics sung in a sweeter-than-springtime coo, a tenor so arresting in its Keatsian tendencies towards truth and beauty, and so passionate in its almost-whispered, swoon-inducing delivery, it never ceases to surprise attendees at a Love Anchor show that this is the musical project of...a male model? Really? And he's an artist too? Wait, he works in how many different forms of media? And he's actually good at all of them? Hmm...might actually stay for the entire show. This type of unexpectedness is alluring- it makes people wonder, it makes them talk, gossip. And so they will say what they might, whether its truth or merely second-hand lie, about this musician who plays more instruments than the number of years he's been alive, who's been compared to Rilke and Plath after releasing his first volume of poetry, who's post-impressionist renderings of floral-based landscape paintings done in oil would make him a complete anachronism if it wasn't for his films- shorts so layered in metaphor your head will reel like you've had too much beauty too quickly, and acute intoxication is your reward, a drunkenness so deep it seems beyond the power of any one man to create works so intensely beautiful. The art of Alexander Frost is a vague wash of narcotic haziness, a blanket to wrap oneself with when dealing with life and its complex mysteries of love, loneliness, suicide, madness, and death. But as one of his dedicatory aphorisms elucidates, Frost and his Love Anchor project may have reduced it....but its reduced expression is one of the most complex feelings a human being can experience. So 'for you, to unravel love's mystery' (the title of his forthcoming novel) is a mission statement from an original creative force, working through his own existential anguish with transcendental objectifications of absurdly dense intellectual and philosophical speculation- injected with a fair amount of mind-boggling confusion at the way the world works. He's been called the 'next Radiohead' and compared to them more than any other group since he began performing under the project title/moniker Love Anchor, and it is a phenomenon he can't explain, but one by which he is nonetheless flattered. They both exhibit an ethereal quality, a solemnity ensuring the radio doesn't play either act, but produce works that seem, for some, the only natural reaction to what is occurring around them. And both Yorke and Frost are fond of a bit of reverb now and again, imparting a spaciness to the basic structure of the music. But Love Anchor, with the exception of certain live engagements, is the work of an individual- can he really be compared to five men, members of one of the greatest bands in the world? Given the platform and the exposure, he is someone who seems capable of almost anything. As mentioned, Love Anchor is from the get-go a step ahead of the myriad other acts out there- originality being his strong point. Listeners may be reminded of this or that group by some of his music, but is it really so similar or have our ears become acclimated to what Pitchfork or the radio is selling us?Whatever the case, Love Anchor has honed his craft for years, becoming less folk-oriented and much less comparable to a great deal of music being made today, so much so that I'm not even certain if a genre specification can be applied to his work. He's traded the scream for a seductive vocal style not unlike Chet Baker, delivered in R&B influenced vocalizations normally not much more than a whisper. He's turned things upside down, been deemed the new 'shape of punk to come' to complete the work of fellow Scandinavians Refused. So the 25 year old delivers lovingly-delivered throat-punches to the states quo- hippie bashing, denouncing all things associated with American government, including making the statement that 'democracy has bitten the dust' and perhaps most notably spreading the inherently jocose, but integral political preoccupationimportant regardless in his search for social change, campaign supporting the abolishment, and murder, of police officers, 'gun-toters with Napoleon complexes and flak jackets, free petrol, and a desire to dominate; to be important when they know they don't mean a damn thing and if they are remembered for being crooked and completely unempathetic, it will only be after some other gun toter blows his ass away. They'll name a highway after that dead cop.' His campaign came to a head after quarreling with Austin police, who arrived in three cars from multiple directions, to enact a late-night traffic stop. After being illegally searched without being informed of his rights or even given a breathalyzer test, he was jailed and his vehicle, which contained his priceless Gibson acoustic and a now non-functionsl Roland beatbox, was towed without being inventoried- someone could have stolen his be