Donnie Alexzander is the “dark and delusional” rock project of Hartford-based artist, Matt Merton. Their first release, a self-titled EP, unravels four slow-burning laments disguised as love songs. Splashes of gothic cathedral reverb, grim guitar lines picked with conviction, and impassioned lyrics manifest a sinister cavern to dance in.

Donnie Alexzander’s debut LP Little Miss Drift Afloat is an expansion of that palette. Throughout the record, frontman Matt Merton muses with portrayals of relationships with family, friends and loved ones, while questioning one’s own values and morals pertaining to love and loss. Merton suggests, “a song is in its most honest form when the character or subject matter you are singing about becomes all the things you are having conflict and issues with. By the end of it, the song almost provides a solution or a feeling of resolution for all those people or things that have caused you pain. To me, music should be its own reality containing its own characters and truths, which may help shape the world we are actually living in.”

Little Miss Drift Afloat shreds, with a proclivity towards the harmonic minor. Love has never sounded so doomed, but like, in a good way.