Alex Cameron – Oxy Music

Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s novel Cherry, and its depiction of the opioid crisis in America, Alex Cameron’s Oxy Music details narratives of addiction and struggle in a world obsessed with social media. Using this context of drug abuse, Cameron confronts the toxicity and vacuousness of a life lived online, while maintaining the tongue-in-cheek quips and brightness found on 2019’s sardonically blissful Miami Memory. 

From the existential balladry of K Hole to the incessant questioning of online-anonymity on Sara Jo, Oxy Music is laden with vividly drawn cultural critiques flippantly delivered in Cameron’s signature style. Highlights include: 'Mosquito mass hysteria / I’m serving up malaria’ and ‘I’m in the kitchen on a cruise / I’m cooking up a codeine ragu’.

While thematically not necessarily upbeat, Cameron’s playful compositions render a paradox of joy-in-struggle. The record ends with an energy that climbs, climaxing at its close with the title track. A lyrically dark, synth-driven pop-punch, Oxy Music exhibits the best of Cameron’s paradoxical compositions; the featured vocals of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson adding real vigour. 

Without doubt, Oxy Music honours Cameron’s skill as a storyteller, and his unique ability to embed some of the most outlandish lines into sanguine melodies. 

Listen to: Oxy Music, K Hole