Xander Marsden introduces a fully formed yet thrillingly evolving new voice whose depth of feeling promises to touch audiences long after the novelty of his tender years ceases to be a factor in his story. The EP was helmed by producer, songwriter and musician Billy Mohler, whose own wildly diverse career has taken him from jazz studies to pop stardom to eclectic collaborations with the likes of Macy Gray, Kelly Clarkson, Jon Brion, Steven Tyler and Liz Phair, among many others.
“In Xander, I found an incredible maturity in his understanding of music and the depth of his songwriting,” Mohler says. “When I was in my early 20s I was in the exact same situation, coming from the jazz world and challenging myself to be in the rock world. Xander has an amazing willingness to be challenged, so working with him has been a rewarding experience.”
Mohler’s unique journey has made him a particularly keen mentor for Xander, whose musical development suggests a much different path than the one he’s taken. Starting out with piano lessons at the age of 6, he quickly switched to guitar under the influence of powerhouse axemen like Slash and Eddie Van Halen. A blues undercurrent took root through listening to the likes of Jimmy Page and Gary Moore, and a hint of jazz complexity through studies of greats like Joe Pass. The pitfalls of the child prodigy – empty virtuosity, a career ended by adulthood – lurked not far away, but somehow Xander tapped into an inner well of emotional expression and an urgent need to share it through his music.
“I discovered that songwriting felt so much more creative and rewarding than just playing guitar,” he explains. “I really wanted to express myself, and I found that a simple song can affect someone so much.”
“Simple” may not be exactly the right word for a song with the self-consciousness and self-affirmations of “Hello Man” or the restless striving of “Town Sleep,” a song that captures the universal feeling of being trapped in one’s place and looking to escape into life. But the songs’ complexity is to be found in its cinematic imagery and poetic allusions, not in its technical intricacy. Despite Xander’s beyond-his-years skills, these songs align more with the indie rock creations of Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett or The War on Drugs than with the heavy shredders that initially inspired him to pick up the guitar.
Much of the music on Xander Marsden was inspired by life developments that may seem minor to an outsider, but anyone who’s ever been a teenager (i.e., everyone) can recognize how seismic they can feel. The songwriting process coincided with Xander beginning high school as well as his family’s move from one Southern California community to another. The fact that the two cities are separated by less than 15 miles may seem minor but is far from insignificant to a young man still discovering his personal, let alone musical, identity.
“The social environment that I was in changed a lot,” Xander says, “and those changes exhibited themselves in these songs. With that kind of change comes new emotions, new ideas and new perspectives, so I was excited to see where those ideas would take me.”
Most significantly, Xander recognized that in the deeply personal can be found the universal, and had the preternatural wisdom to shroud his songs in the kind of lyrical empathy that allows listeners to unearth their own experiences from within them. The startling image that seizes hold when “a crow flies by in your eyes” in “[Sara Bellum];” the shy tenderness of “Pass By” – all are instantly relatable, no longer how long it’s been since the first blush of early love. And Xander finds his own way into the EP’s sole cover, The Smithereens’ fervently yearning “Blood and Roses.”
Major artists have already sung the praises of Xander’s virtuosity. By his early teens he’d been rewarded with multiple Student Music Awards from the renowned DownBeat Magazine and jammed with six-string titans like Steve Vai and Joe Bonamassa. But rather than go to his head, these accolades drove him to explore more deeply inward, and the five songs on this EP are the first treasures unearthed in that search. As Mohler says, “It’s natural for young people to see that they’re getting a lot of praise and attention in one area and to stay there. So it’s fantastic that Xander is challenging himself by entering an exciting new world.”
