Alexander Stewart

About Alexander Stewart

Alexander Stewart started making noise in the Toronto indie scene around 2014, playing basement shows and open mics with just an acoustic guitar and a notebook full of songs about isolation and small-town claustrophobia. The early stuff was raw—more Elliott Smith than Arcade Fire—but there was something in his voice that made people shut up and listen. By 2016, he'd scraped together enough from day jobs and Bandcamp sales to record his first proper EP, which nobody heard except the 200 people who came to his shows.

The breakthrough came quietly, the way these things sometimes do. "Borrowed Time" got picked up by a Spotify playlist in late 2017, and suddenly Stewart had an audience beyond the Toronto club circuit. The song's about watching your twenties disappear while working jobs you hate, and it connected with people who were doing exactly that. His debut full-length, Somewhere in Between, dropped in early 2018 on a small Canadian label. It's a front-to-back listen—ten tracks of mid-tempo indie rock that splits the difference between Frightened Rabbit's emotional weight and the cleaner production of The National's later work.

"The Long Way Home" became the album's calling card, a six-minute track that builds from whispered verses to a wall of guitars that sounds like driving through empty highways at 3am. He toured that record hard, opening for bigger acts and slowly graduating to headlining small venues across North America. The live show was just Stewart and a three-piece band, nothing fancy, but the songs held up without studio polish.

His second album, Neon Dreams, arrived in 2020—bad timing, obviously. It's a more produced affair, with synths creeping into the mix and fuller arrangements that sometimes work and sometimes feel like they're chasing radio play that never came. "Falling Slow" is the standout, proof that Stewart could write a hook without sacrificing the melancholy that made people care in the first place. The album sold decently but didn't break him into a new tier, which seems to be fine with him based on interviews where he talks more about craft than career.

These days Stewart's based somewhere outside Montreal, still releasing music on the same indie label, still touring when it makes sense. He put out a handful of singles in 2023 that suggest he's circling back to the stripped-down sound of his early work. There's a third album supposedly coming sometime this year. He's not going to fill arenas, but he's built the kind of career where he can make records, play to rooms full of people who know the words, and not have to drive for Uber between tours. For a certain type of songwriter, that's the actual dream.

His shows are pretty low-key affairs—people actually shut up and listen, which is rare. There's no false energy, no trying too hard. Stewart's the type who'll talk between songs like he's just thinking out loud. Crowds tend to be there because they actually know the songs, not just passing through.

Known for Somewhere in Between, The Long Way Home, Borrowed Time, Neon Dreams, Falling Slow

See Alexander Stewart Live