Alex Ray – Messy (2025)
Pop-rock singer-songwriter and YouTube personality Alex Ray has been releasing singles with increasing regularity since March 2023, the culmination of which is her debut EP, Messy. Based in Nashville, the singer has turned what was a therapeutic outlet during adolescence into a musical identity that is based on her experiences with bipolar disorder. Messy is exactly that. In five songs and about 12 and a half minutes, the EP delves into a polarised inner world that is by turns hard-shelled and vulnerable and places that world in front of a musical mirror.
The songs here are glittering pop gems marred by the grit of rock, and the dichotomy is never more explicit than on the opening track, ‘Wasted’, with the verses settling into a cool synth groove while the choruses erupt with distorted guitars. Throughout the EP, one feels this back-and-forth tone. Whether it’s the sudden, soft piano bridge on ‘Driver’s Side’, the childishly scathing ‘Boy You Ain’t’, or the desperate longing of ‘Your’s to Use’, Messy is like a musical teacup ride pinning you against the gravity of circular contradictions.
The lynchpin for the EP is something Ray says she learned from her therapist, that “vulnerability is supposed to feel hard.” She goes on: “I realised I hadn’t been practising real vulnerability – I was just sharing what was easy for me. So, I wrote about the things I was most ashamed of, the stuff I’d never said out loud.” Boy, did she ever. What those things are, you will have to discover for yourself. There’s such a raw quality to the lyrics that one feels ashamed for quoting them, like selling tickets to watch someone bleed.
Amidst this, Ray’s voice is oddly composed and strangely soothing. She has a dark quality to her alto range, not unlike Lana Del Ray, especially the way she falls off the end of some phrases, finds the hard and soft edges of her lower end, and toys with her falsetto. If there’s a standout track for how she handles her instrument, it’s ‘Your’s to Use’. She works with a lot of subtlety here, and her voice stays with you long after the dramatic textures of the songs have worn off.
The title track closes down the album with what Ray says are “the ugliest truths about myself… and there’s no resolution because sometimes life doesn’t give you one.” Listening to Messy is like straying into a confession you weren’t prepared to hear. It presents an honesty so stark that it borders on an assault of the senses, just as the confessional tone teeters into the abyss of self-loathing. In one sense, it’s an achievement to have created something so forceful. In another, it’s a relief that she didn’t try to sustain this over the course of an album.
Find out more about Alex Ray on her Instagram, X, TikTok, Soundcloud, YouTube and Spotify.
This artist was sent to us by Unheard Gems
