Alejandro Sanchez, better known as Chezile, has had the kind of overnight success that would give anyone whiplash. After 2023 psych-pop single “Beanie” went viral on TikTok, giving Sanchez 1.6 million monthly listeners in under two months, he went from living out of his car in Los Angeles to getting calls from labels. A sensitive soul, the Albuquerque-born multi-instrumentalist and child of Mexican regional musicians is now based in San Diego, where he’s hard at work on a full-length debut.
After 47 garnered an audience for a sentimentality melded with reverberated guitar, an austere indie rock caught somewhere between Tame Impala and Cigarettes After Sex, Chezile kept digging inward. Life now forever changed by his circumstance, he centered himself in childhood explorations skateboarding through the desert landscape of New Mexico in Alē. The EP’s self-referential nature sees Chezile’s nickname —pronounced like the skateboard trick— give an underlying warmth to the music, the kind of feeling one would get flipping through a scrapbook years later when, upon reflection, one is living a completely different moment.
“[47] was a tough time of my life,” he says of his last EP. “I think this next project, in comparison, has a lot of elements from my childhood, and tackles trying to deal with the music industry while maintaining that inner child, that little Ale.”
Compared to 47, Alē is a hug rather than an echo of melancholia. The title track and lead single, driven by a piano-run and Chezile’s voice, sees him reminiscing on childhood comforts and struggles, through memories of broken air conditioners and skating through patches of brown grass. “Kev’s House” sees him channel an old friendship, and “Hotel” makes a metaphor of the thousand eyes now on him. He leans into his sentimental strengths on tender love song “Wya”, with vocals that call to mind Frank Ocean’s “White Ferrari” begging you to come closer and really listen.
How does one honor their original intentions while balancing what is at stake, especially while making art? How does an artist stay true in the age of viral trends and fleeting fancies? Chezile grapples with these questions through centering the biographical on Alē, the emotional vantage point that’s made his name focused on the kid from humble beginnings dealing with the trappings of fame while trying to stay grounded in the storm of his new reality. It remains in the world of 47, attempting to make sense of it while coming to terms with the present.
“I’m nothing special,” Chezile reflects on the making of the new EP and his virality. “I overly manifested this since I was young. If I’m able to do it, I know for a fact that people can do the same thing I’m doing and whatever they want to do. I somehow want to convey that message through art and be a tool to help kids who were as fucked as I was, people who don’t have influences around them to just tell them that they’re fucking special.”
