Alejandro Rose-Garcia emerged 15 years ago as a sort of one-man-band phenom. After the expansive, full-band scope of 2023’s Movie Of The Week, the new Fondness, Etc. (Secret Identity/Dualtone) marks a return to a more intimate, self-contained approach for Shakey Graves. Written largely during his daughter’s first years of life, Rose-Garcis recorded the album in spurts between daycare drop-offs and pickups in Austin. The music was tracked mostly on a pair of TASCAM tape machines and shaped by a stash of well-worn instruments that included a 1932 Gibson guitar that survived a World War II bunker fire. The results embody the warmth of analog, the breathability of accidental textures and the humanity of imperfection. With scientific fervor, Graves dissects his new album below.
—Hobart Rowland
“Fondness, Etc. was assembled in October 2025, but it was researched and discovered over the course of a few years. Theories of its existence can be traced all the way back to 2018. When I first started making recordings, I had a sort of bucket list of sounds I was dying to explore. They all seemed very far-fetched at the time. But over the past 15 years, I’ve been able to scratch a lot of these itches and follow these sonic whims further than maybe I’d ever initially dreamt.
“Through it all, I now see that I’ve accidentally developed a personal recording style—a sort of warped productive workflow that I hold very dear. In a lot of ways, it’s more like an archaeological dig than a traditional album build, if there is such a thing. Typically, I stumble on a melody fragment in the wild … sometimes even a full song. I record it, then study it. This can take years or mere minutes. If it shows promise, I start to collect the resources necessary to mount an expedition in search of more like it. Results vary.”
1) “Don’t Change A Thing”
“One of the early mornings I spent working on this record, hastily plugging old toys into each other while the world fell apart, I realized I was happier than I’d been in a long—like a work dog with something to do. Maybe it was the stakes involved. Maybe it was the little jellied handprints on all my white shirts. The weather, the season, whatever it was, it was there—a little sense of belonging in the middle of the ruckus.
“On one hand, the song is a pure sarcastic stab at the fact that we might all be sitting on the deck of a sinking ship, refusing to move because we already ordered a drink. On the other, it’s a statement of pure honesty. I love the imperfections of these days just the way they are. My daughter’s hands pawing at the door, trying to figure out what the hell it is he does in there … endless potential.
“This track was part of a four-day recording binge with my longtime collaborator, Cameron Neal. Three of the tracks—tracks one, four and five—created in those sessions made it onto this record and helped create a sort of sonic backbone for the rest of the songs. Once this song was finished, I constantly returned to it as a mantra to keep myself from over-editing. Imperfect vocals? Don’t change a thing. Wind in the microphone? Don’t change a thing.”
2) “What If I Find An Artifact?
“Artifacts are the things that past peoples made, changed and left behind where they lived and worked. Archeology is the scientific study of past human cultures. Archeologists excavate artifacts from archeological sites. ‘Leave it be’ artifacts are not souvenirs. Leave the artifact where you found it. Please don’t pick it up, move it, throw it, put it in your pocket or your bag or bury it.”
3) “When The Love Is New”
“It had been a while since I recorded any music on my own. The last record I did was created in a wholly collaborative way in my drummer’s studio amid the pandemic and was an absolute beast. I knew instinctively that I wanted to scale back for my own sake and reconnect with some of the smaller, shallow-water sounds I’m so familiar with. My daughter was on the way, and I knew my dilly-dallying days were done. Coincidentally, I’d gotten my TASCAM 388 out of repair jail, where it had been stuck for years. I locked myself in my studio, booted up the brown woodgrain vinyl box. Six hours later, I walked out with this song.
“The lyrics are all about the perils of my friends’ dating lives and my own former ones—that relatable moment that arises where you know it’s going to last forever … right before it all falls down. And you knew it all along … But this next one is going to be the one. You know it.
“It had a certain lonesome western sound to it I always chase but seldom nail, and I was very pleased with it. I didn’t make it back into my studio for almost a year after that to do anything. So when I was feeling low, I’d listen to the recording to remind myself that there was some music to go back to. It was like a compass pointing north.”
3) “Time Flies”
“I had a vision of making this album feel like a sort of zero-budget Roy Orbison ’50s pop record. And with such a small window to write, record and release an entire album, I figured I should do what the pros would do and sneak in a cover song written by an old friend. I first heard Frankie Sunswept play ‘Time Flies’ sometime around 2007 at the Sidewalk Cafe in Alphabet City, and I’ve been singing the tune to myself nonstop since. I knew it was going to be a perfect fit for this project and finally made a version of it the way it would play on the radio in my head.”
4) “Suddenly”
“Often the only noise in my small in-law studio was a large white clock ticking away on the wall. When my friend Zeke (Jarmon) came over to record a guitar part, I saw him glance over at a stray microphone that was pointed toward the timepiece. “I was recording the clock,” I joked, indicating that I was at the pretentious breaking point where you begin to record insect noises and field audio. He giggled, but the joke suddenly fell flat as I realized that I could—nay, should—record the clock.
“This album certainly seems to be about time erosion. So why not lean in and go full nerd for just a few seconds? I’ve really enjoyed talking to people who are baffled that I’d include not one but two instrumentals on this album. While revisiting my previous releases, I realized they had sort of a manic energy to them at times. It felt like someone was trying to overemphasize a point, and I found it grating and somewhat exhausting. This record is meant to be listened to as a whole, and these moments of reflection are intended as a much-needed breath. Why let talking ruin a good moment?”
5) “Away It Goes”
“The tone of this song is a flavor profile that Cameron Neal (Texino) and I always seek when we record together. It’s that Acetone, Track Star, Pedro The Lion, Red House Painters, Pavement, name-droppy, shoegazy, genre-core, indie-song thing we grew up on. Cam is a wonderful partner in crime. He always has a beautiful tune like this up his sleeve that allows me to really feel like a producer.
“At a certain point, I was going to swap the lyrics out or try to re-sing his parts. After a few swipes, I knew that was a disservice to the music and decided to let it be. It’s an honor to have a piece on loan from his private collection … the final part of the sonic spine.”
6) “The Boilermaker”
“This was written after a brief brush with death due to idiocy, alcohol and altitude. Long story short, I hosted a party in a mountain town, got super-excited, fed after midnight, transformed into a slimy green version of myself and terrorized said mountain town. I woke up with a furiously sad wife, soiled clothes, a trashed hotel room and few memories. Shamed and confused, I ended up sitting at my Wurlitzer and plinking out a sad melody, just hoping that something semi-sweet could come from the whole experience. This song trickled out into the room.”
7) “I Once Was An Ocean”
“Literally a recording from another time. Years ago, I set out to make an entirely instrumental record inspired by Martin Denny’s Exotica, but I imagined it in Texas instead of the Pacific Islands. This track was the crown jewel of those sessions. I’ve been trying to find a home for it ever since, but it never quite worked sonically or thematically with the other tracks. The song draws on the fact that the harsh, alien terrain of the Big Bend region was once a shallow prehistoric ocean filled with giant clams and tendrilled creatures. At its heart, this record is about the awful grace of change, so thematically, the shoe finally fit.”
8) “On My Own”
“The most technically complicated song on the album. In a lot of ways, I feel like it best represents my production style. I recorded the guitar and vocals into one channel on my porch with no drum machine or backing rhythm guidance, so it was impossible to remove the birds, wind and minor tempo shifts from the final product. At the end of the day, these things added to the environment and pointed me in a good sonic direction. I wanted to use distance from the microphone and the placement of the vocals as a tool to create the effect of an internal monologue. It also features a longtime favorite technique of mine: couch drums.”
9) “No Place To Be”
“The oldest song on the record and a longtime favorite of my mother, the drama professor. This song arrived almost entirely formed. It was originally titled ‘Lonely Hill.’ And though I always felt like it had a strong message but a soft lyrical mid-center, I really disliked the name. I felt that some piece was missing. Lo and behold, this year I went to my first parent/teacher conference, which I thought was most certainly Montessori helicopter overkill. (She’s two.) Like many things in my life, though, I was wrong. They led with the fact that my daughter chops and cooks her own food and folds her own laundry. At this rate, I’ll have her take a swipe at my taxes.
“As I sat stunned, her teacher went on to say that my daughter’s real joy in the classroom comes from learning the process. If she’s going to paint a picture, she loves setting up her space, picking a paint color, putting on an apron, etc. The result of the painting is inconsequential. I realized that this was it: the big takeaway. The results are always pending, impermanent and in many ways unimportant. The process is the job: the plugging and unplugging, singing, digging, cutting and pasting of it all. I ain’t got no place to be, so I might as well enjoy the scenery.”
See Shakey Graves live.
