iSound

Contagious, grab-you-by-the-lapels rock and roll can't be created in a vacuum. It has to poke up through the earth, from between the cracks -- urged along by folks who're willing to get their hands dirty while coaxing it along. Alexander Seier, fomerly on Lava Atlantic Records, has plenty of experience doing just that. This disc, which draws on several years of experience playing the Eastern seaboard from his Pennsylvania home base, belies Seier's flair for both driving guitar anthems and intriguingly crafted ballads. "I listen to everything from Tori Amos to Pantera to Oasis to Radiohead and I just happen to write pop rock and roll songs that fall somewhere in the middle of all that. If I were to go out there alone as a singer-songwriter, I think people would expect me to have an acoustic guitar and be all-sensitive. Some of what I write is sensitive, but that's not the whole story, and that's why I'm in a band." Alexander Seier bears traces of many of the artists on...