Xander Lee – legacy act (2025)
Set apart by his minimalistic arrangement, raw intimacy, and pure passion, singer-songwriter Xander Lee brings the best of mid-2000s emo to 2025. The thing is, just as his music draws on the emo-rock scene of yesteryear, a lingering glint of electronic pop-punk breathes through his melodies. Join us in our introduction to Xander Lee as we leap headfirst into his single, ‘legacy act’.
On the heels of the well-received ‘Anhedonia’ and ‘Highs and Lows’, ‘legacy act’ is Lee’s third stomp into 2025. Taken from his upcoming EP, Love and Lust and Shades Between, the single offers a taster to an album of honesty, vulnerability, and exploring life in all its grit and glory. Self-penned, composed, recorded and produced, ‘legacy act’ – as with all of his music – is a labour of DIY love; so, we should expect the song to be a full representation of Lee in all his grit and glory.
While retaining a brimming sense of pop-rock heard in ‘Anhedonia’, ‘legacy act’ rushes forward in a chaotic rub of pop-punk. Melodically, the combination of pounding drums, scorching guitar, and shimmering keys tosses you into a kaleidoscopic sonic hurricane whipping about you with frenzied ferocity. Interestingly, while the tune is a bit crazy with slices of electronica breaking through with synth-driven obscurity, a sense of soothing flows through the track, kind of like a silvery link with Xander Lee’s gruff vocals being that anchor in a storm.
‘legacy act’ is a tumultuous wash of hard-hitting, smack in the face music; however, it is the lyricism and theme that push its profoundness. Tapping into the complexities of broken relationships, ‘legacy act’ is about a break-up with no real conclusion. Lee explains:
“I think the saddest way that a relationship can end is through simply realising that the two people are simply just incompatible with each other, and there’s nothing they can do to fix it. At least with something such as a cheating incident, there’s a clear thing that you can point to and attribute to the breakup. Here, there’s no closure to the situation, nothing that either party could have done differently to avoid this; it just feels like you were never supposed to be together….”
Find out more about Xander Lee on his X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
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