If Alphabet Supine were a fruit juice, it would be orange. It’s perfect for a light spring morning with eggs sunny-side up, hitting with a delicate but tangy dose of sweetness and vitamin C. It’s perky and soothing, yet the citric qualities within are too tart to bring to the dessert table.
Alphabet Supine is fresh-squeezed melancholy made delicious with a pop-sugar blend of breezy guitars, syrupy bass, crispy drums, and easy-going vocals garnished with a sprig of peripheral auto-tune.
Though its music recalls a Floridan export, Alphabet Supine is a Midwestern project that currently spans from Oklahoma City to Guthrie to St. Louis. The band’s four members–Dane Heins, Derek Moore, Josh Praizner, and Tyler Haynes–collaborate virtually from their respective bedrooms and, despite having a rock band lineup, they have never played together in person, even before 2020’s COVID pandemic made it mandatory.
The project’s chemistry transcends its logistics, though, and that’s no fluke. Alphabet Supine’s founding members Heins and Praizner used to play for years together in The Samurai Conquistadors, a criminally underappreciated alt-fusion band that used to jam around Norman. Alphabet Supine is a decidedly different feel–it’s tighter, less extravagant, more polished–but it shares a similar hypnosis in groove.
The new band’s latest is its second lead single from a forthcoming debut EP. The song is called “Wits End”, and you can give it a spin now in this Make Oklahoma Weirder track premiere at the player below.