Purely Timeless: Alex Amen at the Ukie Club
“The last time I was in Philadelphia, I played a showcase at a radio station,” Alex Amen recounted after his first song of the night. The performance he’s referring to was his captivating set at the 2026 NonCOMMvention here at WXPN. “It was my first time here, and the day before, we just played on the street. Everyone is so nice in this city!” Gentle laughter permeated the crowd at the thought.
But, to our fair city’s credit, the Ukie Club audience could not have been kinder to the 25-year-old troubadour. The soft-spoken Amen took the stage without fanfare and went immediately into “Please Don’t Tell Me That You Love Me” from his debut full length, Sun of Amen, which dropped back in September on ATO. Anyone who hadn’t showed up early just to see him—seemingly few and far between based on the chatter before the show—was sold from the moment he opened his mouth.
His press bio describes him as “an artist untethered from time and space.” Usually, my eyes would be rolling before I reached the third word, but it seems like an honest assessment. Amen seems ripped from the pages of The Whole Earth Catalog. He spent time on a commune, restored a wooden hulled boat on Puget Sound, and cut a self-recorded demo on Zorthian Ranch in Altadena just before the fires. Jumping to today, we see him traveling solo as an opener for the jazzy Dana and Alden. While he still feels like a best kept secret, he has all the trappings of someone destined for bigger things.
With a voice that falls somewhere between Emitt Rhodes and Gram Parsons, and with dexterous hands riding wild but restrained on a Harmony Sovereign guitar, Amen ambled gently through a well-paced set featuring only a few songs from his latest record. “Cabin By The Sea” featured a dazzling lead break that demonstrated the gentle fury of someone who could clearly reach beyond cowboy chords and a capo when the moment permits. Meanwhile the playful “Peaches” showed the keen wit of an economical poet: “If you don’t want my peaches / honey, don’t you shake my tree.” So familiar, sure – but there’s more than a hint of close magic to his music. You think perhaps you’ve heard it before; nevertheless, you want to hear it again.
Among the new and unreleased material was “Bosque,” a song written on a trip back home to Texas about the ranch that serves as principal filming location for Yellowstone (perhaps in hopes of a sync, he joked). He sang about his recent move to what he called a “much colder place,” New York City, on “Packing Paper.” A personal highlight was “Hello Old Man,” written about his close relationship with the nonagenarian grandfather he credits for sending him down this particular path in life. The song draws inspiration from a phone call where they discussed the merits of a 12-string guitar, only for him to arrive home a few days later to find one waiting as a gift.
Early on, Amen called attention to the rather unique setup of microphones adorning the stage in front of him, which fed into a mid-50s Ampex tube preamp, noting that the show was being recorded and seemingly apologizing for the inconvenience. Au contraire, good sir. I couldn’t be happier at the prospect of someday hearing that set again. I would hope it reflects the magic that was in the air that night: a delightful glimpse of a man out of time with his star on the rise.
