One-Man Band
Why you should listen to Basement Alchemy
Here’s a bit of harsh truth. Occasionally, I used to find new music through Instagram Reels. I know. I know. But it was during the phase when I was constantly watching Reels.
More than a year ago now, the clip that caught my ear was maybe thirty seconds long, with a guitar riff that had a specific texture that felt both enormous and intimate at once. The guy started singing, and I was impressed. It was a slow-burning alt‑rock track with big harmonies. I stopped scrolling.
The song was “Zero to One,” and the artist was Basement Alchemy.
I learned very quickly that Basement Alchemy is the project of Shai Pelled, who started the whole thing in a London basement with a microphone and some YouTube covers. By the way, his covers of The Cure’s “Lovesong,” Linkin Park’s “Burn it Down,” and R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” are amazing. The origin story matters more than it might seem. All of what you hear in his original music carries that sound of one person figuring out what they want to say and then doing it.
He’s a one-man band.
It’s the same ethos Wolfgang Van Halen brought to his personal musical project, Mammoth. The difference is that Basement Alchemy has been doing it longer, with less fanfare, and with a catalog that deserves significantly more attention. I’m trying to change that.
His debut record opens with a song called “The Optimistic Road,” which could be the title of his whole musical endeavor. There’s a string arrangement underneath a rocking riff that makes it feel cinematic. Critics have drawn comparisons to Queen, A Perfect Circle, and Tame Impala. He cites the Beatles and grunge in general as influences. He works in the space where those influences meet rock and pop. I’d call it 1990s alternative rock pushed into the 2020s.
One of my favorite things from last year was The Basement Alchemy – Live from the Basement. The video was one of the coolest watches I had seen in 2025. I love how he not only played every instrument but also crafted the video to look like a full band, even though it’s just one guy playing everything.
Which brings me to his latest album, Introverse. I’m writing this having spent time with an advanced copy. I’m one of a few hundred people who were able to get a signed physical CD months before the release, and I’m honored to say I’m acknowledged in the liner notes for my early faith in Pelled. I want to be honest because this isn’t a puff piece from someone with a vested interest in hype. It’s a genuine listen from someone who has followed this project and wants more people to find it.
The album sits in the lineage of Basement Alchemy’s previous work, In Spirals/Heads, In Spirals/Tails, and especially Changing Colors, while feeling like a natural evolution rather than a reinvention. If Changing Colors was the album where everything clicked into place (and in my opinion, tracks like “Miracle“ and “Zero to One” remain the high-water mark of his catalog), Introverse feels like the morning after a breakthrough. It’s settled and inward-looking. The title says it all.
The sonic fingerprint is early Collective Soul, filtered through a modern indie-rock lens. The first single, “How to Have a Good Day,” is the best song of the collection. It’s the album’s most melodic song with the most accessible sound and a fantastic riff. I hear the Beatles influence here and it’s completely natural. “My Mind” wears its Collective Soul influence (The “Shine”-era riff is unmistakable) on its sleeve and is better for it. “Are You Real?” might be Shai’s best vocal on the album. He effortlessly moves from his straight singing voice to his head voice.
The B-sides gifted with the early copy, “Retired & Re-Energized” and “Underneath the Light,” are strong enough that I wish they’d made the proper album. That’s a minor complaint, but I do hope he adds them as singles after Introverse comes out officially in October. In the meantime, I just made my own playlist and added the tracks like it was 2012, and I’m making yet another playlist in iTunes.
After listening to the full album for a few days, what stays with me is the ambition underneath the intimacy. These are songs that want to say something and reach for something larger. Just like the rest of the entire Basement Alchemy catalog, Introverse feels like the work of a singular creative genius.
In fact, I think that’s the whole point.
Be seeing you.
Three Reasons Illinois Makes the Final Four
Since Selection Sunday, I’ve been sitting in my feelings about Illinois Basketball. So, here are my three reasons why Illinois makes the Final Four.
Yes, I’m going out on a limb writing this before their game against VCU tonight. Deep breath. Here we go:
One: This team has been built for March. The Illini have gone through enough adversity this season to know how to respond when things get hard. Tournament basketball rewards teams that don’t panic. This group doesn’t panic.
Two: Keaton Wagler just won Big Ten Freshman of the Year. You don’t win that award without being something special. A freshman who performs at that level in a conference that hard is exactly the kind of player who outperforms expectations in the tournament, because he has nothing to prove and everything to gain.
Three: The bracket will break right for someone. It always does. This is a team capable of beating anyone in the country on a given night. That’s all you need.
I’m not predicting a championship. I’m predicting a run. There’s a difference, and right now it feels significant.
Please let this be the year…
Bruce Pearl
Speaking of Selection Sunday, I dislike Bruce Pearl. I’m not the only one. To be fair, I hardly ever give him a second thought, but then there he was doing his schtick on CBS.
Will Leitch wrote a whole column in The Athletic apoplectic about Pearl on the Selection Sunday show. This is the meat of it:
As someone who grew up an Illinois basketball fan in the 1990s, I’ve been trying to solve the Pearl riddle for most of my life, from all the way back when he was an assistant coach for Iowa, where, frustrated that he was unable to land prized recruit Deon Thomas (who is now 55 years old), he doctored allegations in such a venal, chaotic way that it ruined several people’s lives and careers for decades, including his own. (The definitive account of the Bruce Pearl-Deon Thomas fiasco was reported by Daniel Libit at Deadspin more than a decade ago; the scandal led to Pearl being cast out of the sport for nearly a decade before clawing his way back from Southern Indiana and Wisconsin-Milwaukee to Tennessee and ultimately Auburn.)
What I couldn’t understand about Pearl, for years, was how cheerfully shameless he was. No matter what happened to him, no matter what he was caught doing, Pearl always, always doubled down. He always assumed it would all work out for him.
This struck me as no way to live. It was less about the obvious moral failings involved — though there was that — and more about how this sort of strategy seemed so clearly doomed to fail. The old joke about Pearl was that while every other successful coach was driving 80 in a 65 mph zone, Pearl was driving 125 mph. Sure, he’d likely get caught at some point, but not, the way he saw it, if he simply got where he was going before you did.
But that can only work so many times. After too many scandals — and Pearl has so, so many — polite society has no choice but to cast you out. You can’t outrun the police car forever. Eventually, the world finds you out.
Nope. Pearl was right, and I was wrong. Pearl knew that he didn’t need to hide his deeds from the world. He just needed the world to catch up with him — to realize that pretending there was some sort of society that held us all together was a chump’s game. Pearl broke every rule. But he was smart enough to realize the world was starting, it turned out, not to care about rules anymore. Nobody checks for speeding anymore. Nobody cares!
Why is this guy the face of college basketball?
Brand New Day
The Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer dropped this week and I’ve watched it a couple of times now, which probably tells you everything you need to know about where I’m at with this.
Four years after No Way Home wiped everyone’s memory of Peter Parker, we find him doing the only thing that makes sense: being Spider-Man. It’s an interesting starting point and seems about right.
And then the trailer gives you approximately fifty other things to think about.
The Punisher’s back, in his battle van. The Scorpion shows up. I’m pretty sure that was the Tarantula for half a second. There are Hand ninjas, which means maybe we see Daredevil? Peter has a class with the Hulk. Is he mutating? Hey, look, Tramell Tillman from Severance is in there, too.
I have no idea how this all comes together, but it looks great.
He Doesn’t Know What He’s Doing
The man sitting behind the Resolute Desk is out of his mind. This person possesses the title of Commander-in-Chief. This person is “deciding” how to conduct a war against Iran that he started. He does not know what he’s doing.
This is not just my opinion. I urge you to watch this short montage (one minute and 47 seconds) of Donald Trump’s mind-bending and deeply alarming contradictions showcased within a matter of minutes. It was assembled by CNN and shown by anchor Katie Hunt in an effort to make sense of his position on allies taking part in re-opening the Strait of Hormuz. His frustration over their sensible reluctance is obvious.
But what this clip really provides is fresh evidence of Trump’s scale of derangement, his inability to think or act strategically, and his utter lack of fitness to be sitting in our Oval Office. That’s been true for a long time, but it has become increasingly clear.
He does know one thing… a war with Iran keeps the Epstein files out of the news.
