Alex Somers’s mesmeric debut solo albums Siblings and Siblings 2—both released on the same day—were a going concern for the composer and post-rock musician for nearly a decade. A work of frequently staggering beauty that spans two albums and 26 tracks of ambient soundscapes and orchestral experimentalism, the project was not exactly escapism for its creator. Somers began work on this music in 2014, writing the bulk of the material over the next three years and even finishing a version of it around then, too. “But then I abandoned it and just didn’t listen to it,” Somers tells Apple Music. “I pretended it didn’t exist for a long time. Every once in a while, I would put it on and touch base with it, really slowly, on and off, opening up one of the songs and add something or take something away or totally remix it from scratch.” He had other things to concern himself with: his ongoing work with Sigur Rós, his continued musical collaborations with partner Jónsi and numerous film score projects including 2016’s Captain Fantastic and 2020’s Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana, which featured three tracks from this set, “Sooner,” “Between Us” and “Whirlpool.” “Taylor Swift is amazing,” he says. “It was very cool to do that, a window into a different world.”
Eventually, it was Jónsi who provided the necessary motivation, reminding him that there was a special album that deserved some attention sitting in a drawer somewhere. “Jónsi heard it all the time because we live together so he hears everything,” Somers says. “He was extremely encouraging. He felt it was a really healing album and he really connected to it and would encourage me to finish it and share it. I think I wasn’t ready to let go of it for some weird reason. I was holding on to it even though I didn’t enjoy holding on to it. It’s complicated. I’m so happy that I did manage to finish it.”
One piece of music, the dreamy broken nursery rhyme-ish “Locket,” harkens back to when Somers moved to Iceland in 2005. “The very first version was the first piece of music I ever wrote when I moved there,” recalls Somers. “It makes me smile. I didn’t really know what I was doing, it was before I really knew how to engineer or mix or do anything.”
Over the next 15 years there, Somers honed his skills both in his own studio and through his work with Sigur Ròs. He says the influence of the post-rock icons on Siblings and Siblings 2 can’t be overestimated. “It’s their attitudes around making music,” he says. “They’re so humble and not pretentious. The way they approach making music has really rubbed off on me.”
There’s a hypnotic push and pull to Somers’s songs, and they seem to morph into each other and drift away from one another at the same time. Two tracks, Siblings’s “Looking After” and Siblings 2’s “Following After,” are actually the same song, with the latter version at double the speed. On “Tell Star (For Joe Meek),” meanwhile, Somers pays tribute to an original master of studio experimentation. “He [Meek] was a pretty cruel person, but as a sonic pioneer, he has changed my life,” he says. Written and recorded in Reykjavík and completed upon his relocation to Los Angeles in 2020, Siblings and Siblings 2 are remarkable next steps in Somers’s career. They have opened up new paths forward. “I want to release more music and share more music,” he says. “Hopefully letting go of this body of work will free up space to explore more.”