Alexander Tso was sixteen when he made his previous album, Infatuated. Infatuated sought to make a sweeping, orchestra-infused widescreen spectacle out of Alexander’s awkwardness and loneliness. His new album, Tendencies, was completed only a few months after Infatuated was completed, and it is a concept album just like Infatuated. In fact, it could almost be a thematic sequel…but it has a personality all of its own that is almost a direct backlash against Infatuated. Alexander is lonely as always, and that's the problem…now he's self-consciously self-conscious. Alexander uses loads of self-deprecating (or self-defecating, as he would say) humor to pick at his sad, screaming, friend-zoned-teenager persona…while at the same time fully aware that he isn’t doing anything to fix it either, thus giving his songs names like “I Suck at Doing Crap” and “Wallowing in Self Pity.” There are no big orchestras on Tendencies, only walls of raw and distorted grunge guitar. But do not fear, Alexander has far from abandoned his true emotions and love of all things big and epic; songs like “I’m Not Crazy, Just Ask the Voices” and “Happy People” ought to do the trick. He still cannot resist pop, as demonstrated on “Just to Be Your Man." He even experiments and expands his sound with “The Tick of Time.” Tendencies is deliberately over-the top and it contains some brave, yet bizarre moments that he would never consider putting on any other album. But what truly makes it great is the dark seriousness beneath everything, creating an album far deeper, darker, more diverse, and more entertaining than anything he has created so far. And as with all of his music, Alexander has written, recorded, and mixed everything entirely by himself. Except for the artwork. His friend Emily Lucas did that.