andrew tuttle: alexandra

Andrew Tuttle grew up in Alexandra Hills, a quiet slice of rural life in Redlands, a city which lies 20km or so from Brisbane, on the East Coast of Australia. Or at least that was the plan. The reality proved to be somewhat different, the area changing quickly after his family's relocation there, resulting in his home being quickly absorbed by rapid urban sprawl, leaving him in a limbo between nature and suburbia. Alexandra, Tuttle's fourth studio album, reflects the growth apparent in his three previous Room40 releases and commitment to developing a reputation in his home country of Australia in the time since his 2015 debut. Leaning upon the inspiration pulled from recent tour supports with contemporaries such as Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, and Calexico; Alexandra presents a true sonic landscape; a musical reflection of a rediscovered homeland. A magician of banjo and resonator guitar, Tuttle named the album after that Queensland street and suburb where he first created and fell in love with music. Alexandra is the sound of rediscovering one's environment, almost twenty years on, tracing it with an organic, expanding flow of energy. The songs on Alexandra weave their way serenely and purposefully, tracing a gossamer path resembling the distinctive, scribble-like burrowing patterns left by moths on the scribbly gum trees which dot Tuttle's ambles through the Australian bushland backgrounding the suburban environment. Splashes of color flutter through like rosellas in flight, with pedal steel, piano, strings and horns contributed by collaborators such as Chuck Johnson, Tony Dupe, Sarah Spencer, Gwenifer Raymond, Joel Saunders, and Joe Saxby. Painting broad strokes of local color amongst a deeply rooted spirit of place, Alexandra is a journey that tranquilizes the restless mind. This expansive album cycles through a rediscovered environment, illuminating forgotten or overlooked landmarks, evoking the dreamy ritual of the "flaneur" (a romantic figure imagined by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin) who wanders the streets, with the sole purpose to wander. Mixed by Chuck Johnson and mastered by Lawrence English, Alexandra was tracked externally at Brisbane's The Plutonium by engineer Aidan Hogg, then edited and processed at Tuttle's studio in Brisbane and at his childhood home on Alexandra Circuit in Alexandra Hills.