Alex The Astronaut Announces Anticipated Debut Album ‘The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing’ Out Aug 21 + New Single “Lost”
May 8, 2020 BY Nettwerk
“so adept at writing pop songs that capture the rush of young love, friendship, confusion, sadness and all those messy situations that dominate your early 20s” – The Guardian
“For fans of Courtney Barnett and positivity: this one from Australia’s Alex the Astronaut is a song we all need on our playlist.” – Refinery29 re: “I Think You’re Great”
Alex the Astronaut (Alex Lynn) has always had a supernatural knack for capturing human experience in song. With her heart-swelling, folk-inflected pop, music’s bright-eyed anthropologist uses sprawling narratives and rich vignettes to unravel the joys and struggles of everyday life. Today, Australian singer, songwriter and storyteller Alex Lynn announces her debut album, The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing. Brought to life with bright melodies, plucked guitar and Alex’s unmistakable vocals, The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing is the work of a storyteller attuned to the world around her. The album is out August 21 via Nettwerk and, today, she shares her new single “Lost.”
The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing explores friendship, love, loss, pain and change, weaving a constellation of stories about the personal reckonings that come with growing up. “I transitioned out of college, I went through my first break up, I lost a friend, I got into my first proper grown up relationship, and I started seeing bigger problems in the world,” she explains. “I wanted the songs to mean something to me, to sit in my values, and I also wanted them to be a group of songs that told stories that meant something to the people that heard them,” adds Alex. “I’ve called it The Theory of Absolutely Nothing because I feel like the Einstein quote ‘the more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know’ really started to make sense to me during this writing process and a part of that comes through in a different way in each song.”
New single “Lost” is about trying to find your way and fix everything, and the moment where you’ve exhausted all options and have to accept the fact that there is so much that is completely out of your control: sometimes you will just feel lost. “The song is pivoted around a moment of change when someone is walking new ground and they really don’t know what’s to come,” adds Alex. “For me it’s one of those ‘one goes out, one comes in’ times when you lose what you hoped things would be like but you get to move through a different world that maybe will show you something you didn’t know you would see.”
From the get-go, Alex the Astronaut’s music has dug into what makes us human. On The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing, she grapples with the multitudes of life on a bigger scale than ever before and emerges optimistic, as heard on previously shared singles “Split the Sky,” “I Think You’re Great” and “I Like to Dance,” which have received praise from the likes of NPR Music, The Guardian, Refinery29, Brooklyn Vegan and FLOOD Magazine. “Split the Sky” is a timely track about life coming at you fast and having to get through a tough time by rising to the occasion while, at the same time, longing for the simplicity of youth; “I Think You’re Great” is a shout out to a cherished friendship and a recognition of the need to check in on each other, opening up conversations and supporting friends through thick and thin; and “I Like to Dance” turns the spotlight on the devastation of domestic violence.
THE THEORY OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TRACK LISTING
01 – Happy Song
02 – Lost
03 – Split the Sky
04 – I Like to Dance
05 – I Didn’t Know
06 – Caught in the Middle
07 – Christmas in July
08 – Banksia
09 – I Think You’re Great
10 – San Francisco
11 – Outro
ABOUT ALEX THE ASTRONAUT
A talented soccer player, Alex Lynn moved from Sydney to New York on a soccer scholarship in 2017 and studied Math and Physics at Long Island University. It was while she was in the US that she turned a streak of bold new life experiences into heart-swelling, folk-inflected pop songs under the name Alex the Astronaut. Her debut album The Theory of Absolutely Nothing follows two acclaimed EPs (To Whom It May Concern and See You Soon, both released in 2017) and a slew of big singles, which have had a way of landing at just the right moment. The track that started it all was 2016’s “Already Home,” which contains the now-iconic line “And there’s billionaires for presidents / And parking fines at hospitals.”
The following year, Alex returned with “Not Worth Hiding,” an open letter to her 16-year-old self that details the journey to owning her sexuality, which arrived as Australia was debating marriage equality and became the unofficial anthem of the Vote Yes movement. It was played by none other than Elton John on his Beats 1 radio show and ranked at number 23 in tastemaker radio station triple j’s Hottest 100, the publicly voted poll of the best songs of the year.
Along the way, Alex has taken her music to the stages of international festivals like The UK’s Great Escape, Primavera Sound in Spain and Manchester’s Neighbourhood Festival. At home in Australia, she’s played Splendour in the Grass, triple j’s One Night Stand and a sold-out national headline tour of her own.
