Alex Gardner's been a one to watch* since the start of last year and while a black and white photo of a man playing an acoustic guitar might not exactly set your pop pulse racing WAIT A MINUTE because his music sounds like THIS…
…(which is today's Song Of The Day) AND THIS:
…(which might be a Song Of The Day at some point in the future) and is the consequence of this Edinburgh-raised teenager working with the green-fingered Xenomania team on a series of tracks that veer from the electronic to the acoustic but never too far away from Alex's seductively melodic 'brand values'.
Over the four or five times we've seen him on stage he's developed (you could say things have gone 'uphill') into
a very promising live performer with a strange stage presence that's at
once confidently relaxed and fanatically precise. The acoustic stuff isn't quite as much to our tastes to be honest but that's 'instruments that don't plug in' for you and even then there's a nice one called 'There Goes My Heart' which we are sure you will hear in due course.
There's more music and a brilliantly overblown biog ("the pop-writing craft of George Michael [and] the looks of a young Elvis") on his MySpace, and here is what might reappear in December in a shortlist of 2010's most boring Twitter pages. Finally, moving pictures and a free download on his official site.
* Please feel free to come round and kill us dead if you see that phrase on Popjustice again. See also 'on the up', 'tastemaker tip', 'destined for greatness' etc etc etc.
