Alien Boy - Don't Know What I Am [PINK/YELLOW VINYL MARKED DOWN] - New LP

Alien Boy is guitarist and songwriter Sonia Weber, drummer Derek McNeil, and a rotating cast of Portland, Oregon scene stalwarts. As her band’s Wipers-inspired name might imply, Weber is a PDX lifer, and anyone who’s spent time in the last decade’s DIY circuit will recognize something undeniably West Coast in Alien Boy’s sound: a sharpened, focused take on the heavy guitar pop of the 1980’s, chorus pedals and punishing drums the canvas for bold strokes of recollection and yearning.

In a scene where abstruse lyrics and ironic detachment are all the rage, Alien Boys high-stakes, brash pop is as refreshing as it is surprising. Lead singer and songwriter Sonia Weber communicates subdued desires and secret grievances in the grand tradition of emo and pop-punk and rock n roll in general.

Alien Boy takes its name from a Wipers song, but elsewhere the groups PNW lineage is felt in a mordant grit gleaned from Team Dresch and early Heatmiser. It sets the tone for Weber to mix her deep-seated love of early 2000s generational touchstones with a Britpop frostiness to brilliant and totally unique results.