A CITY ON A LAKE

A City on a Lake

acityonalake.com

Written for a certain kind of 30-something—the type that spent the early ’00s in college listening to Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie and maybe even John Mayer’s Room for Squares—this solo project from Brooklyn producer and multi-instrumentalist Alex Wong is an album about holding on. On “The Fighter” he likens himself to a bloodied boxer, and if that metaphor suggests a toughness and bravado largely absent from these delicately constructed, electronically accented piano-pop tunes, the general idea holds. In his own soft-spoken way, Wong is a fighter: “Are You Listening” is about hanging tough in the big city, while “Twenty Faces,” the thesis, is about overcoming fear and snatching whatever passes for happiness.