Alexis Marshall – House of Lull . House of When Cheap

“I’ve always felt like more of a performer than a writer,” Alexis Marshall says when asked about the impetus behind his first solo album. “In the past I lacked confidence to guide the creative process, but now I just wanted to be entirely in control of something.” Marshall is best known as the frontman for Rhode Island’s notorious provocateurs Daughters, whose eight-year hiatus between their posthumous self-titled album and the critically acclaimed comeback album You Won’t Get What You Want found the ever-evolving band explode from down-and-out cult heroes to one of the biggest bands in the nebulous territory where abrasive noise rock fuses with high-art aspirations. Whereas most music built around dissonance and tension feels like a cautious flirtation with nihilism or an excursion of role-playing the villain, Marshall’s loathsome oratory and self-flagellating performances always conveyed a sense of true emotional gravity and danger. For his debut album, he wanted to push that sense of chaos even further, by crafting an album around moments of spontaneity and sonic detritus, where a mistake could become a hook or the whip of a chain could become a beat.