“Wrote her a song, but she don’t care,” Alexander sneers in the opening lyric of “Girl Song (For the Ladies)”. “She fell for the guy with shorter hair.” Alexander is back, revitalized, rejuvenated, and ready to rock. Where we left off, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter seemed to be in an emotional rut—his last two records, Staying Insane and The Well-Tempered Tantrum, were both smorgasbords of styles and diversity, with Staying Insane displaying a near-manic outpouring of songs of varying styles unified by a restless struggle to make connection in an empty romance, while The Well-Tempered Tantrum chronicled the decay of a relationship. Both of these albums had wide stylistic variety within the track lists, and consequentially, the individual tracks sometimes felt like trial-and-error attempts to make a connection. While the albums were remarkably cohesive in spite of that, the albums lacked a unified, distinctive sound, but on Off Kilter, Alexander is noticeably free from those shackles. He’s revitalized and ready to rock n’ roll, and more importantly, have lots of fun doing it.Now backed with an ensemble of stellar musicians who share his passions as opposed to his old MIDI guitar leads (Max Hiner on lead guitar, Jackson Raimondo on rhythm guitar, and Harrison du Plessis and Adele Marie playing the acoustic parts), Alexander is finally able to answer the question of “what is the Alexander Tso sound?” On the first half of the record, Alexander takes advantage of his resources, piling layer after layer of Max n’ Jackson’s guitars, creating loud, punchy, immediate, and catchy power-pop anthems that harken back to albums like Hopes and Dreams Disorder and Growing Young, but with refined confidence. Alexander recalls the Tendencies-era punk attitude with “Sad to See You (You Look Nice)” and “Girl Song (For the Ladies)”, both of which rock with the self-effacing power-pop spirit of vintage Weezer. As usual, however, he embraces the epic and never lets a musical opportunity to go to waste. Many of his otherwise-three-minute pop-rock songs contain an instrumental passage that enable them to transcend their format and dive into epic territory, as heard in the unexpected bluesy solo in “Sad to See You” or the gratuitous rawk guitar duel at the end of the deceptively glammy “Big Red Heart”, or the abrasive finish of “Organism”, in which Alexander gives us a jarring idea of what Frank Black might sound like in bed. Likewise, his grand curtain-opener, the title track, recalls the theatricality of “Pain Cathedral” but ends with the cacophony of “The Tick of Time”. These songs are at once polished and gritty, finding a listenable and compelling balance.Flip to the second half of the record, where the emotion and diversity take a front seat: Alexander first dials back the gain a bit for the Growing Young-style, REM-infused acoustic psych-pop of “Watching Paint Dry (The Best Day Ever)” and the passive-aggressivly sunny, Beatlesque folk-punk of “Troubled Mind”, before taking a darker, grittier turn on “Four Chord Rocker (I Was Nothing)”. Shoegaze is introduced as a new influence on this record—if “Caught Myself” is My Bloody Valentine meets Eddie Van Halen, then “Four Chord Rocker” is My Bloody Valentine meets Marilyn Manson. The seductively sinister song erupts violently, with its distortion extending past the guitars and into the drums and vocals, before tapering off into an artful noisescape a la Sonic Youth. It seamlessly transitions into the emotional centerpiece of the record, “Reasons in the Rhyme”—a piano ballad that showcases both Alexander’s classically-trained musical abilities and his emotional vulnerabilities. Alexander then lets it all loose with the cathartic 9-minute climax, “The Eleventh Hour”, which goes by like a breeze, before concluding with the indie folk-tinged curtain-closer, “For a Nameless Girl.”Off Kilter, much like Staying Insane, was written within a very short amount of time. However, while this factor may have been Staying Insane’s Achilles’ heel, it is Off Kilter’s virtue. The ideas are as consistent and strong as ever, and are bursting with renewed reinvigoration rather than desperation, even if it’s Alexander’s relentless restlessness that drives the album into existence. Off Kilter’s songs transition seamlessly between each other with almost no breaks, providing a full-force adrenaline rush that feels much shorter than it is. It’s an album that tries to be a greatest hits record and an art record at once—and, thanks to its seamless flow and expansive-yet-concise song structures, it pulls it off so smoothly that it all feels like an essential part of the thrill ride. Its Pink Floydian transitions and classic Tso lyrical themes—love and lack thereof—make the album feel and sound like an Infatuated-like concept album, but the only concept to be found is, perhaps, Alexander’s Summer of 2016. And, after the long writer’s block that slowly churned out The Well-Tempered Tantrum, this reinvigoration was much needed. This is not an album designed to impress people or desperately break free from any perceived shackles—this is the sound of the shackles having come off. This is the sound of Alexander writing the songs he wants to write, making the album he wants to make. This is the sound of him having fun doing it. This is the sound of him no longer rejecting the ideas that he finds"not serious enough." This is the sound of him finally finding comfort in his own skin, no matter what the lyrics may insist. This is the Alexander Tso sound.