Newcomers Alex Coley & Afterlove, along with special guest Alexander Gallant, make their début at The Carleton on Thursday, November 16th. Show time is 7:30 PM and tickets are $20 + HST,

Built around his soulful, worn-in voice and wrapped in tender harmonies, Alex Coley & Afterlove explore the elemental tension between joy and pain; heartache and healing; what was and what will be. Alex Coley is a Nova Scotia-based songwriter and indie-folk musician with an affinity for novelty, big feelings and good questions. Music has always been a compulsion for Alex – his headspace an enduring and immutable arc of melody. It became an obsession after a long drive across the Maritimes with his dad. It was the first time he heard Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’ over the crackly speakers from the back seat of his dad’s red Ford Aerostar. Like all things worth enduring, Alex’s relationship with music has been complex, terrifying and inevitable.

In his debut album The Arc, Alex’s thoughtful songwriting uses the personal as a portal into the universal. His vulnerable and intimate lyrics dredge up feelings you forgot were there – inviting you to gracefully move through melancholy. The deeply stirring songs offer a clarity you can often only find when you get really quiet; at the end of a long winding road travelled alone. His songs seek to articulate what we lack the vocabulary for, helping us make sense of the things that often don’t.

Alex and his bandmates: Braden Kammermans (bass), Ted Morris (drums), Connor Robins (lead guitar), Sarah Roberts (harmony), and Dan Richards (keys), each brought their unique sound and perspective to the album. The Arc was produced by bandmate and friend, Braden Kammermans (Sleepy Kicks), who encouraged the disruption of folk cliches by offering a less predictable and more scuzzy sound.

Alexander Gallant is a folk singer-songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the tradition of A Singer With A Guitar, Alexander’s songs are simple, direct, and have one foot planted firmly on the ground. Alexander believes in song as the purest method of communication, and uses folk styling to deliver his musings on the profound, absurd, and the blue.