Philary

Alex Molini has built a reputation as a versatile indie rock participant through tenures with outfits such as Stove and Titus Andronicus, yet he pursues his own noisy and frequently ferocious sound under the Philary moniker, a direction crystallized on the 2019 release I Complain.

Operating from Brooklyn as a multi-instrumentalist, Molini rarely confines himself to a single project. During the latter half of the 2010s he contributed to shoegazers Stove, expansive indie rockers Pile, noise rock duo Dirty Dishes, and experimental noise collective Fond Han while also appearing on two Titus Andronicus albums. After establishing himself as a reliable collaborator across these groups, he launched the Philary project in late 2017. The debut EP Bummer incorporated threads from each of those prior ensembles while aligning most closely with the thoughtfully off-kilter noise gaze associated with Stove.

A subsequent album charted a separate course. Captured partly at home and partly at Black Lodge studio in Brooklyn, I Complain incorporates heavy-metal references through its downtuned guitars and oft-screamed vocals, adopts the concise lengths typical of punk, and still carves room for intermittent shoegaze-y melody. Exploding in Sound issued the record in June 2019, a label that had previously hosted several of the bands with which Molini had previously collaborated.