Erik Alexandrakis’s wonderful musical offerings return with a brand new, passionate single that drips with such vivid color and wholesome character that reminded us right away of why we love the man so much.
At the beginning of his latest single, it seems that the Rethymno-based, Greek singer and songwriter works with a limited toolset. A fizzy, lo-fi acoustic guitar, a trebly harmonica, a fiddle of some sort, and a blurry beat that seems a little unclear. It doesn’t take long before you realize that this all is exactly what elevates his music and makes it feel so endlessly alive.
‘The Same Mistakes Again’ is the latest single from the twice Grammy nominee, collaborator with names such as Dolores O’Riordan and Yoko Ono, wine drinker with John Malkovich, and physics professor at Princeton that is Erik Alexandrakis, and perhaps his résumé alone can get him forgiven for any off-kilter mixing choices he is capable of. ‘The Same Mistakes Again’ is an infinitely warm number that just sounds like a cozy home. From the sweet composition and touching words, to the man’s vulnerable vocal delivery and the gorgeous melody of it, everything about the song sounds beautifully domestic, and all the domestic bliss gets blown out of the water by the incredibly rich fiddle solo that blares halfway through the song.
From the gentle upheaval of the arrangement from a simple, countryside bluegrass cut at the beginning, to the addition of soaring, blurry pads, one layer after the other of vocal harmony, all the way to this fiddle solo, and the subsequent implosion into a tavern hall-friendly, folkish passage in the very end, ‘The Same Mistakes Again’ is a sensational piece of folk and bluegrass music that will warm your heart to the very core. And then you’ll start to understand why the physics professor at Princeton was right in his mixing decisions, and that maybe you shouldn’t be judging a physics professor’s mixing decisions in the first place.