Mr. Alec Bowman - I Used to Be Sad & Then I Forgot (2020)

English singer-songwriter Mr. Alec Bowman knows a thing or two about appearances and how they often differ from reality. As a professional photographer and filmmaker, he is attuned to the varied ways we interpret the world visually and he has a keen ear for verbal and musical nuances. These skills are combined to mesmerising effect on his new album, I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot.

A quick glance at the cover might give you some small clue as to what lies within. The typeface, the sunlit meadow, the hazy close-ups of buttercups: these are all redolent of a particular type of album, maybe one of those lost pastoral folk masterpieces of the late 60s or early 70s. And while Bowman is certainly no stranger to a sweet melody or a soft-focus soundscape, that is only a fraction of the story. These eleven songs occupy a world that is profoundly personal and at times, extremely dark.

It is Bowman’s first release under his own name, and accordingly its songs are autobiographical, drawn from the deep well of lived experience. In Bowman’s words, ‘it’s all me’, and while it is transfixed by moments of astonishing beauty, its overall mood, in the words of its creator, is ‘angry, fragile, redemptive.’