The Lookalikes (USA)
A song cycle about existential cowardice, with subthemes of death, masochism, Seattle, and personal ads as a prayer against loneliness. Half the songs were written by Steve and the other half are by the great Alex Wolf. (A few were co-written.) After many years of being mistaken for each other, we named our duo the Lookalikes [or Lookalikes (USA)*].
A recent reassessment by its usually self-critical authors: Time has been uncannily kind to the album. If anything, it seems to be far more at home in our current era than in the era of its birth, due to several unpredicted cultural aesthetic drifts and paradigm shifts: Home recording is now hip! Quiet is hip! Vulnerability is sexy! "Looping" is ubiquitous! (We called our punky homemade analog tape version "snowballing.") And...Everyone finally admits to using dating sites! Yet Life-o-phobia still feels experimental, risk-taking, un-cliched. And yet further....pretty. rockin'. melodic. deeply felt. well-crafted. fun. catchy. sad. angry. honest. ironic. painfully sincere. funny. eclectic! cohesive! and kinda crazy! We predict you will agree.
When recorded in a basement apartment in Seattle in the early 1990's (mostly 1992-3), this quiet-ish material was out-of-step with the ubiquitous local/national Grunge sound. The Lookalikes (USA) almost never performed live out of insecurity, lack of a visible like-minded music community, and lack of appropriate local venues. The open-reel 4-track home productions, while careful and creative, were unslick enough that we didn't even try to shop it to a label. However, the music found a home once the Lookalikes discovered the NYC Antifolk community a few years later. The duo released a cassette run** of several hundred copies, which sold out quickly. Perhaps it even influenced or inspired some of the better-known music from the scene which followed shortly thereafter? Probably. The duo now plays occasional, well-attended reunion shows when geographically possible. (Alex lives near Boulder, Colorado, Steve in NY.)
