What constitutes political music? With tiny, granular shifts in imagery, lyricism and themes, on their fourth album, California’s The Saxophones look to subtly question the current state of the world and their place within it.

 

Still rooted in their characteristic smoky, faded glamour, No Time for Poetry discreetly expands the natural breeziness of 2023’s To Be A Cloud with a sense of angst and tension, whilst retaining their inherent romanticism. Husband-and-wife duo Alexi Erenkov and Alison Alderdice are augmented by their regular collaborator Richard Laws on bass, synthesizers and keyboards, as well as multi-instrumentalist Frank Maston who provided production support.

 

Lead track ‘Too Big for California’ sets the tone with evocative imagery (“Trampling the lupine, admiring the fog”), giving the listener agency in determining the exact meaning, over a wind synthesizer solo that sounds like downtown city lights. Alexi’s rich baritone balances anxiety and resignation, singing the line “The shanty towns are burning” with an intimate lilt, before the payoff: “Still I’m … doing fine”. Nowhere is this understatement more present than on the denouement when he sings: “The vineyards here are burning / Now I’m … quite concerned”.

 

Alexi expands on the meaning: “Despite California being very liberal, it still has a lot of issues that are not being resolved – the homeless epidemic and frequency and scope of wildfires being top of mind for most people I know. There’s a disturbing way in which one can still go on living a normal life in the midst of all this suffering and risk. I was trying to put the feeling of drinking wine with friends while the hills burn into song. There’s a culture of impotence, a lack of will I was trying to capture.”

 

Musically, the spectre of mid-period Leonard Cohen hangs over the record, and the band acknowledge this was a key inspiration, though it never feels forced or veers into pastiche. “That’s the biggest touchstone,” says Alexi, “the kind of dystopian songs he was writing with a satirical attitude helped set the darker political tone of this record.” The synth pads and vocal samples on the almost interstitial ‘I Fought the War’ bring to mind neon-soaked soundtracks to Drive, The Last Showgirl or 80s LA cop dramas, as much as I’m Your Man or The Future.

 

‘America’s the Victim’ is set upon a bedrock of plinky, stuttering Rhodes, the staccato, woozy bass clarinet and alto flute weaving around the muted Beach Boys-style bass. Lyrically, it connects back with the themes of ‘Too Big for California’, satirically suggesting: “White man’s the victim / America’s the victim / Somehow you never knew”.

 

“I get really frustrated by historically dominant groups (white, Christian, heterosexual, etc.) acting like they are persecuted when they are still the ones holding almost all of the power,” says Alexi. “It’s a strange pull where you have these groups that have shaped most of modern history, but they can see that they are on a path of losing power and so they have this very victim-based reaction to criticism. I do think they’re correct to see their cultural influence waning, but for them to identify as martyrs feels out of touch with the suffering other groups have been experiencing for centuries. A huge inspiration for my approach to this song – and much of the album – was Randy Newman’s Sail Away. I never want to write a song about how wrong someone is, it just feels too literal; it’s much more satisfying to actually sing satirically from your opponent’s position and let them figure out what you’re trying to say. I’ve always felt Newman does that brilliantly.”

 

‘No Time for Poetry’ fits into “the steamy 80s thing, and is a comment on our society’s priorities as well as the culture of fear that is starting to spread. The lyric “Have you seen the new guillotine / Town square will never be the same / I haven’t changed my mind / I’m just less likely to complain” is speaking to the fear many are feeling in our country. I know it’s an unease people have felt throughout history here, but this is the first time in my lifetime there are signs even the privileged might not be protected if they’re on the left side of the political spectrum. At the end of the day, I just wanted to write a sexy album that said “Fuck you” to Trump. I didn’t want to wallow, I wanted the record to feel good and not preach, but I also wanted my music to be relevant and address this moment. The unkindness I’m seeing is just incomprehensible to me. Being a father of two little boys, the easiest way for me to put it is that there’s not a single quality I would want my own children to embody that our president and his many acolytes exhibit. The support and celebration of this egregiously self-serving man really leaves me feeling lost in my country.”

 

Continuing the Cohen-esque theme, the smooth 80s synth pad intro to ‘Cypress Hill’ also evokes the earthy lustiness of Bill Callahan, the opening lines conjuring the most wonderfully evocative scene: “Put the shovel down / Remove your evening gown / Lay upon the headstone / Let’s fool around.” About the song, Alexi explains, “Cypress Hill is a cemetery next door to where I grew up in Petaluma, California. Many people are put off by the idea of living near a cemetery, but it was actually a very beautiful space filled with trees, and it had a huge eucalyptus grove behind it. I’ve always been fascinated by and afraid of death – it’s a theme I can’t seem to shake across all my albums. The song is about the sorrow of losing someone and the desperation to reconnect with the physical being you lost. Trying to comprehend how the gulf can be so wide between the living and the dead when we’re all just matter and there’s ‘nothing between us’.”

 

Most tracks on the album do not follow a traditional verse / chorus structure and very rarely is anything recognisable as a chorus returned to more than once. “I don’t tend to chase having a chorus or a bridge,” says Alexi. “Sometimes those are the most boring elements to me in a song, you know? Here comes the chorus: it’s the predictable part. So several songs satisfy that itch for a chorus but don’t hit you over the head with it: I just do it that one time and then it’s gone.”

 

A key difference to previous albums is that nothing was written on guitar this time around, with everything starting on keyboards, and as Alexi explains: “In addition to the 80s Leonard Cohen influence, I was also really inspired by a new record I discovered called Enter the Zenmenn by the The Zenmenn. I became quite obsessed with it and just love what they’re doing with synths and samplers. They inspired me to dust off what might be thought of as some of my dorkier 80s and 90s keyboards and go a bit more digital.”

 

“Another guiding principle on this record as opposed to some of our past work was to avoid adding extra bells and whistles to make songs interesting. I really wanted to write songs that were captivating in their simplest forms and have no more than three to four core elements happening at any one time, so that each part could really shine on its own.”

 

Throwing a welcome wrench into The Saxophones’ minimalistic ethos was Frank Maston. Alexi and Alison brought him on board and he played a key role. “We asked him to go rogue and just add any elements he saw fit to our demos. When he sent them back to us we re-recorded our favorite parts. While we only kept a select few of his ideas on each song, the process ended up pushing the songs in unexpected directions. It was very liberating to collaborate in this way and feel less precious about every idea needing to be my own.”

 

Further enhancing the sonic palette of the record was Richard Laws. A friend since college and core member of The Saxophones, Richard eschews the limelight and is rarely interested in interviews or being featured in photos or album artwork, yet his influence on the band’s sound is immense. Richard records and arranges much of the synthesizer, Rhodes and bass parts on the album; for the first time on a Saxophones record he even helmed the engineering desk and assisted recording vocals and drums. His background is much more centered on experimental electronic music and the collaboration always yields surprising results that help the band create a hybridized sound that can be hard to place in a specific era.

 

No Time for Poetry is a snapshot of The Saxophones personal and political reflections and a questioning of the uncertain world around them, realised through a mixture of wry resignation and gauzy optimism.

 

 

Ben Jones | July 2025