Alexander Biggs’ sophomore album ‘Stay with the Horses’ is a raw and reflective reckoning with change, growth, and presence – an intimate, sonically daring collection that marks a new chapter in his artistry.
Stream: “r u nervous” – Alexander Biggs
Some music feels like a deep exhale – a quiet but powerful reckoning with the past.
Alexander Biggs’ sophomore album Stay with the Horses is one of those records: A raw, reflective, and sonically daring exploration of love, loss, and the elusive art of being present. Written in the wake of his 2021 debut Hit or Miss, through personal upheavals and a restless search for clarity, Stay with the Horses (independently released February 7th) pushes beyond Biggs’ indie folk foundations, embracing rich textures and a fearless approach to storytelling.
Gonna wet my feet, sea of love, sea of nothing
Sea of “call me in the morning,
see if anything is there,”
I don’t really see any point to be running
When I turn another corner
and you’re still right there
Got a little numb, getting some,
getting tired of me
How you think I feel? I wake up and I’m there
Future is a gun, broke my thumbs
on the coin machine
Baby, one more spin, and I’m done I swear
Are you nervous? Cause I’m nervous
I just feel so f*ing worthless
– “r u nervous,” Alexander Biggs
Active for a full decade, Biggs has long been lauded for his ability to turn intimate moments into universal truths, but here, his songwriting takes on a new level of vulnerability. Stay with the Horses isn’t just about heartache or healing; it’s about the in-between, the quiet struggle to remain present when life pulls you in every direction. As he explains, the record took shape over the course of a few years, through shifting realities, personal upheaval, and an ongoing attempt to make sense of it all:
“I know it’s old news and we’re all over bands with COVID records, but it started there – or a little before there – in the vacuum of my first album release, Hit or Miss,” he tells Atwood Magazine.
“I was making songs all through that, and then into the ‘new normal’ that we’re all living in, through a couple health things and the final break up of an on-again, off-again relationship I’d been in through Hit or Miss. That album and this one are kind of like bookends for the most turbulent part of that. I was reflecting a lot on my lack of presence in my own life, too, and trying to get a handle on my brain. Trying to explain myself.”
Biggs’ reflections on presence and self-explanation became the foundation for Stay with the Horses, an album that doesn’t just document change, but wrestles with it. As he moved through the writing process, the record evolved alongside him, shaped by both the unpredictability of life and a newfound desire to challenge himself artistically.
“I wanted to build on my first record and apply everything I’d learned in writing and recording that,” he explains. “I didn’t really have a plan much further than that. I figure my songs are best when I just let them be diary entries for my life, and that my records are best served by living and letting the cards fall. Somewhere in there I got a real itch to f* things up a bit and challenge this ‘indie folk’ moniker I’ve been copping, so that birthed a few of the sounds, and songs like ‘know ur style’ and ‘r u nervous.’ A lesson I learned in that was to really push against the boundaries of my comfort zone. I’ve always found little ways to push it, but looking back those creative choices never look like risks. I’d like to take more risks.”
For Biggs, Stay with the Horses isn’t just a second album – it’s a statement of growth, a bridge between where he’s been and where he’s going. While his signature intimacy remains, there’s a newfound confidence in both his artistry and perspective. His songwriting feels sharper, his sonic palette more adventurous, and the album as a whole presents a clearer, more assured version of the artist he’s becoming.
“I think I’ve lost my training wheels in a lot of ways,” he admits. “Those two EPs – I was still finding my feet. I think this record builds on Hit or Miss. I found something to channel, between those two records. I’ve matured as a writer and a maker and a person and I’m ready to keep building. What I mean to say is that I think I have a sound now, and a voice, and I’m excited to keep evolving and growing and bringing people in and hopefully doing good with this thing I continue to build.”
Biggs candidly describes the record as having ‘something for everyone.’ At its core, though, Stay with the Horses is a deeply personal album, shaped by his own experiences of self-discovery, presence, and growth. That sentiment is embedded in its very name – a phrase that, for Biggs, carries both literal and metaphorical weight.
He recalls, “I was working at a school during the final stages of the album’s creation, working in literacy intervention with some younger kids. One was particularly attention deficit, always off with the fairies, which was something that I felt particularly close to, as someone on the spectrum and working through a process of medication for ADHD. I knew learning was hard for this kid. I came into work one day and my colleague was mentioning a conversation he’d had with the kid’s mum, that she’d said that when he wanders off you could always say, ‘stay with the horses,’ to bring him back.”
“I think she’d meant, ‘stay with the horse,’ – they like riding horses, apparently – but the idea of staying with these horses, running wild with them, staying present but somehow free and agile was so evocative to me. Staying with the horses was a way out of this feeling I’ve always had of never really being present for too long.”
Highlights abound on the journey from “pocket protector” to “know it now” as Biggs spills his soul in song, embracing a delicate palette and achingly introspective lyricism.
From the dreamy warmth and beachy soundscape of “don’t mean a thing” – a visceral inner reckoning with unspoken, unresolved tension – to the raw satire (and biting critique) of “bullfighter,” the lush sonic blanket and unapologetic vulnerability of “r u nervous,” and beyond, Stay with the Horses presents itself as both comforting and cathartic – a collection of songs here to soothe the heart and stir the soul.
Biggs, too, has his own intimate connections to each of these tracks.
“They’re all dear to me in some way or another,” Biggs says of his songs. “‘r u nervous,’ ‘digital clock,’ and ‘all the bruises’ all felt like I’d caught something completely. Sometimes I catch ideas and they run off the edge a little bit. These ones felt like I caught them, at least lyrically, as faithfully as they came. I like that warbly, lethargic, erratic synth solo thing in ‘know ur style.’ I like bopping my head to the beat of ‘r u nervous.’ That’s how it existed for so long before I finally found the words for it. It was my little ode to to Regina Spektor in a way. She’s the GOAT. ‘digital clock’ is pretty special, and I like going on that journey with it.”
Hold me down or hold my hand
It really makes no difference
Pull me out before the end
We played it like a violin
Never meant
Never did
No surprise
You weren’t looking
No survivors innocent
Exactly how it’s always been
– “digital clock,” Alexander Biggs
For Biggs, songwriting is as much about capturing fleeting moments as it is about crafting fully realized compositions.
Each track on Stay with the Horses holds a distinct place in his heart, not just as a piece of music but as a snapshot of emotion, inspiration, and evolution. Whether it’s a song that lingered instrumentally for years before finding its words or a melody that crystallized a feeling he couldn’t quite articulate, the album is a testament to his deep connection with the creative process. And while his songs are deeply personal, he hopes they resonate far beyond himself.
“I can only hope these songs get to the folks who need them, and I hope they serve them well!” he shares. “I’ve come a little further in making records on my own, and in doing that I’ve learned that I’d like to be a little more collaborative for a while. Bedroom studios get lonely, and I’d love to share music making again. It’s the friends you make along the way, and all that.”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Alexander Biggs’ Stay with the Horses with Atwood Magazine as he goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his sophomore album!
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:: stream/purchase Stay with the Horses here ::
:: connect with Alexander Biggs here ::
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Stream: ‘Stay with the Horses’ – Alexander Biggs
:: Inside Stay with the Horses ::
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pocket protector
‘pocket protector’ is about the pull of two different lifestyles. Acknowledging, at this moment anyway, a dichotomy in depth of love against depth of experience. This niggling feeling of wanting some grand hedonism or thrilling life experience and feeling that I couldn’t–wouldn’t – have that in the place I was in. That I’d always choose love over novel experiences. I kind of make fun of myself and that train of thought – the immature, self-involved yearning to be a “true, tragic artist.” I roll my eyes at the artifice of those lifestyles, but I also see a piece of myself yearning for that from time to time. To run and live freely, unattached and unobligated.
don’t mean a thing
I wrote this song in lockdown because I was listening to lots of Porches and There She Goes by The La’s and I was inspired to make something upbeat. Got so sick of playing sad, slow songs all the time. I liked starting it off with ugly cords, letting the verse kind of hang there, ungrounded, and then going in with a really poppy chorus. It speaks to those moments where you find yourself with this nagging feeling or sense that something isn’t right, but your partner, or your friends, or even your own understanding of the world tells you it’s nothing, or it should be nothing. How do you reconcile that when it feels like something?
bullfighter
There was this band that had blown into the scene that had written some pig-headed stuff, glorifying treating women like shit and starting fights on a night out and stuff. I don’t wanna name them, but they doubled down, threw a bunch of slurs around, dismissed the songs as satire but I doubted it very much. The songs weren’t satirical at all, there was no line drawn, no consequence, no irony, it was just boys being boys and I f*in’ hated it. I wrote ‘bullfighter’ as my small f* you. This is how you do satire.
r u nervous
‘r u nervous’ existed for a long time as an instrumental, having been conceived the same day as pocket protector. I wrote three songs that day. I remember I was in the Native Tongue writing room, and it was pouring rain. You can still probably hear the tram on the piano track. The lyrics didn’t come about until I’d moved into my new place after a final, wet-cough fizzle of this on-again, off-again relationship I’d been in.
Gonna wet my feet
Sea of love
Sea of nothing
Sea of “call me in the morning see if anything is there.”
I don’t really see
Any point to be running
When I turn another corner
And you’re still right there
It came to me as I found myself yet again fence sitting in a relationship, reflecting on all the start-stop, break-up-and-get-back-together moments of the relationship. We’d matured so much as people and friends, been lovers and enemies, and it felt like we’d finally landed somewhere else this time. Still, this feeling of patching things up hung there like it was in our DNA, all the while we turned our heads and tried to go opposite ways.
Got a little numb Getting some
Getting tired of me How you think I feel?
I wake up and I’m there
Future is a gun
Broke my thumbs on the coin machine
Baby one more spin
And I’m done
I swear
I was singing about all these attempts of forgetting through rebounds and casual sex and getting so sick of myself. Like, you’re tired of me? I see myself every day. I wake up and I’m there. This was a different fence sitting; between freedom and happiness and fun, and loss and suspended love. What was happening to it? I could see it transforming but into what? Can you just park it and leave it, like a dust cover over a vintage car? How do you stay friends? If you can, what do you do with the love? The romantic love? The sex?
digital clock
‘digital clock’ is a snapshot of a moment of my life where it felt like nothing I did meant anything. It’s this portrait of a new numbness I’d found, losing meaning and purpose and a destination.
all the bruises
This song is about a fleeting connection. It’s a snapshot of a moment. So many of my songs are like this. I’m often asked who songs are about. I don’t see it like that. Like, for sure, these songs are written about or inspired by someone in particular, but so often they’re not snapshots of those people or documents of the places. They’re x rays of the heart. And in that way, I can sing them and still feel them, even if the inspiration has changed. It’s still so true to me because my heart feels in similar colours. My body feels; its chemicals move in similar patterns. The x rays line up like an animation flip book. A little different each time but based on the same base thing. And so, I sing these songs and at times they apply to where I am, not where I was. And it’s as authentic a feeling as it was when I wrote it.
It’s about something Intimate and close but ultimately hollow and sickly sweet. Rolling my eyes at the thought of ever seeing them again. Being so close and wanting to be away from it but in the moment you’re both walking it off. Both of us rebounding, both of us licking our wounds and f*ing it away. Both of us sick of each other. All of it temporary.
sleeping in
‘sleeping in’ is another track I wrote about this feeling I’ve always had that I’m just floating through life. It’s another song that brushes against the themes of the album: I have not been present, but I yearn to be. I often get this feeling that I’ve only ever been outside of everything. Relationships, community – close, yes, but forever in orbit, ungrounded, losing it in the middle distance.
I reference the car accident I had that wrote my car off just as the pandemic restrictions were being lifted. A P plater was on their phone and drove into the back of me on an exit ramp. I remember watching them approaching in the rear-view mirror, head down. It was a couple seconds but felt like I had a good 10 to think, ‘oh shit, look forward, this could be a bad one.’
The kid was way more shook up than me, inconsolable. I didn’t say anything about the phone. I felt like I was in a daze, a little shell shocked maybe. That floating feeling again, a little more amplified. My car got towed to a place nearby and I just gathered my stuff from it and took the tram home, still in my high-vis, green bag of detritus from the floor of my car in hand. Closing my eyes, I’d see the second before the impact, and just as the car hit I’d jolt back into focus. It felt like I was sleeping through that too.
I used to know what I wanted
You ever get that feeling that you were on track, you had a vision, and all of a sudden you catch yourself wondering if you ever really wanted it? Though I didn’t know it at the time, the idea came to me through one of those moments. Being in the US for the first time, alone, and meditating on where my life had taken me, and whether I was on the path I wanted to be. The idea just stayed swimming through the clouds until I finally had a chance to stop, pandemic style. It took that vast moment of questioning, soaking in it, to finally reach up and grab it and start writing.
Know your style
I’m trying to capture this feeling of the final, eye-rolling, ugly end of a relationship. You know all their baggage, you’re through with talking to them, you are there but you are checked out. It’s a drag, but somehow there’s still this oily film of co-dependence.
Know it now
I felt this was a good song to end the record with. One of the small moments where you feel you finally see everything as it is. A moment of clarity that had come to me, not when I was told I had cancer, but a few days after the fact where I learned I would be operated on within the week. Everything got real and sobering and tangible. And it was a moment of realising some things are unknowable, and out of reach, but I felt, in a way, that maybe I could understand it all–in its unknowingness–if I just zoomed out far enough. An, “ah, of course,” kind of feeling—I do not understand, but I accept your math. An acceptance in the chaos of it all. It was a comforting thought. Really, every day is a step into not knowing, and an acceptance of that was powerful.
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:: stream/purchase Stay with the Horses here ::
:: connect with Alexander Biggs here ::
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