Hotel Alexis
“Goliath, I’m on Your Side”
Broken Sparrow Records, 2007

‘Goliath’ connects Sid Lindner’s life between the East Coast and the West

“Portsmouth, would you ever take me back someday?” Hotel Alexis frontman Sidney Lindner wistfully asks from his apartment in Denver, Colo. Lindner is preparing to release the band’s sophomore effort, “Goliath, I’m on Your Side,” the follow-up to 2004’s “The Shining Example Is Lying on the Floor,” which was recorded before Lindner moved west two years ago. “Goliath” is due to hit stores Jan. 23, released on Broken Sparrow Records, the label Lindner co-owns with fellow musician and Portsmouth resident Nate Groth.

Though absent in body, Lindner remains a golden boy of the Seacoast music scene, with “Goliath” chock full of contributions from local musicians. Since leaving Portsmouth, Lindner has lived in Colorado and California, and will have moved to Seattle just before this article is printed.

“I was a little on the run from myself when I left Portsmouth,” Lindner says. “This record just seemed to sprawl along with everything else in my life.” The search manifests in the 14 songs on “Goliath,” an album that sounds less like Limbeck on valium and more experimental than “The Shining Example.” With deep roots in pop sensibility that arches over even the most muddy of the album’s psychedelic rivers of calming noise, “Goliath” successfully packages the landscapes and changes that have informed Lindner’s songwriting over the past two years.  

Though often thrown into the “Americana” sub-genre that seems to be pasted on anything with a steel guitar, “Goliath” shifts Hotel Alexis away from traditional folk-rock. The electric guitars on “The Range” are as surprising as the nearly-19-minute epic “Hummingbird/Indian Dog” that covers the gamut from discernable melody to washes of sound that culminate into a heartbeat rhythm. “Goliath” shows a more mature and possibly more confused Lindner, who paints himself as a regular guy but more sensitive than most and quick with killer metaphors.  

With his sawdust-coated tenor that resides lower in the mix on “Goliath” than on “Shining Example,” Lindner, like Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, carries on the tradition of the rugged American troubadour but with a Gen X twist; his songs are sad and dark, yet astonishingly hopeful. “It rained on your army in that soft, soft, war/ but I’m not sorry anymore,” he sings on the album’s first track, “Soft Soft War,” along with “She comes in and it’s all I need right now/ lights on the highway and darkness in town.” Lindner can make a vivid picture with few words. “The things that make me want to write something are often found in books and magazines and also in dreams and movies,” he says. “There are characters that are specific people. Kind of like when you dream about someone and it’s them and it’s also someone else.” Not only does larger pop culture inform Lindner’s songwriting, his time spent in Portsmouth does as well.    

“I think Portsmouth is as close to a home as I’ve ever had,” he says. “I lived in Portsmouth longer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived and that certainly counts for something.” It makes sense, then, that the album is fully rounded out by the same cast of characters that appeared on the last one. Ex-girlfriend and musical partner Kimberlee Torres plays unintrusive, melodic bass on “Goliath,” echoing the days when the two played together in the band Torrez. “Kim and I are good friends and I think she is one of the best songwriters and musicians ever,” Lindner says.   

Other local musicians include Gregg Porter on drums, Nate Groth on guitar and vibraphone, Jon Nolan on pedal steel, and Elizabeth Antalek contributing a sweet, unassuming voice to “Suddenly, It’s You and Me,” a dreamlike song about being out West and missing the East. “Don’t you wish Cayce was here?” Lindner asks in the song, referencing his older brother, who also played in Torrez.

Beyond the success of Torrez, Lindner is well-remembered on the Seacoast simply because he writes good songs that people can identify with. A brooding New Englander with a grand vision that sweeps across the American grasslands all the way to the Pacific, he has cemented his place in Portsmouth’s musical heart as a wandering soul who might someday return to sing us more of his well-crafted songs. At a recent acoustic performance at Portsmouth’s RiverRun Bookstore on Nov. 26, ex-Torrez member Chris Greiner covered “The Season for Working” and noted that he was the third person in a week to cover a Hotel Alexis song live in Portsmouth.

Aside from its local fame, “The Shining Example Is Lying on the Floor,” originally released as a CD-R, was well-received by critics, ranking at number three in Dusted Magazine’s Top Ten Records of 2004. Lindner is well aware of the curse of the sophomore slump, and says he felt the pressure while recording “Goliath.” “Basically, anything that one can feel pressure about, I feel pressure about,” Lindner says.    

While “Shining Example” was collected from songs that Lindner had written over previous years, a lot of “Goliath” was written in process. “It’s not like you sometimes hear about people writing in the actual studio,” Lindner says. “I really can’t do that, but the songs were more contemporary with the recording process. It’s a totally different record.” The newness of the songs on “Goliath” lend themselves to a spontaneity that isn’t as apparent on “Shining Example,” as Lindner labored over those songs for years.  

Lindner recorded the album at three different studios, though they flow as if they were all recorded in one sitting. The bulk were recorded at Djim Reynolds’ Estate Studios in Leominster, Mass. Lindner says he took the recordings, “added lots of stuff to them, then stripped them back down again. “I can really get into doing about 50 tracks on any song, which I think mostly comes from being insecure about the song itself. You know, ‘Just one more weird haunting vocal track and this will be perfect.’” Lindner recorded the song “The Range” at Zippah Studios In Brookline, Mass., where he recorded the Hotel Alexis debut album, and did another handful of songs himself at Am Is One Traveling Studios.

The album’s blue-on-black cover illustration shows a frowning Goliath with a bandaged eye, though Linder is vague about the album’s title. “It might be a concept album about the biblical behemoth,” he says. “It’s also a reference to wanting to comfort this behemoth that has been so vilified through history. Someone should be on Goliath’s side.” Lindner’s sensibility that down-and-out souls need companionship is present throughout the album. There was a song called “Goliath, I’m On Your Side” that didn’t make the record, though the title stuck.   

Both of the Hotel Alexis albums are released on Broken Sparrow records. “We’re very excited about the next year,” Lindner says about Broken Sparrow, which also released records by Nat Baldwin, Testface and Angels of Light. “We’ve got some really interesting stuff in the works.” As 2007 progresses, it will be interesting to see how “Goliath, I’m on Your Side” stacks up to its predecessor, as well as if Sidney Lindner comes to town to visit.

“I truly miss Portsmouth,” he says. “I never thought I would say that.”