Artist Profile: Tōth

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez

Tōth, the solo art-pop project of Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Alex Toth, has reached, in many ways, its culmination with the release of his third LP under the moniker: And the Voice Said. After years of personal and creative turmoil and triumph, Tōth has come to represent a needed outlet for its founder, and, with the arcing rhythms and fresh energies the new project takes on, it seems as though that outlet has found its fruition–  one that takes a much different shape than the two previous entries in Tōth’s catalogue.

From the time he was a child, Toth has gravitated towards music as a release for his rebellious energy. When he was in the third grade, the band teacher gave students the opportunity to try out various instruments, mostly as a method of recruiting. Toth chose the trumpet because, since it only had three buttons to manipulate, it seemed like the most accessible path into music.

He quickly learned to improvise on what he was learning, and he remembers being drawn toward elaborating on the sheet music he practiced with from an early age.

When he got into high school, however, he fell into habits that caused friction both with the law and his parents. In hopes of rectifying this behavior, his father sent him to a jazz camp in New Jersey, where he truly encountered the potentialities of music as a form of expression for the first time. Needless to say, this experience was more than transformative for him.

“It just gave my neurosis, my adolescent angst, a total channel. It was a channel for my self-destructive energy as well. Then I was [became] the cigarette-smoking jazz musician. That was my identity. I would blast this band, The Don Ellis Orchestra out the window of my car… I'd be smoking, roll up to high school, blasting that sh*t. That was like my punk music.”

From that point onwards, he and his means of creative expression became intertwined. Through college, he would spend up to eight hours a day practicing his instrument– playing over various records and constantly honing his craft. That increased comfort with his instrument brought an enhanced ability to improvise: to express his own sensibilities without inhibition or shyness. He became involved in poetry as well, taking cues from the Beat Poets and letting his words spew forth without intellectual tie-ups, purely from an internal rhythm and melody.

He eventually co-founded Rubblebucket– the new-age project that gave him his first true opportunity as a professional musician. 

Yet the initial years he spent fully immersed in the music scene took an inescapable toll on him. In 2013, he decided to begin a journey that would shape the entirety of his life moving forward. He got sober.

From this journey, and his budding interest in Buddhism, came a sense of clarity and peace he had previously failed to find. He began venturing into songwriting, starting a song-a-day practice that forced him to overcome any inhibitions he had surrounding his voice and his abilities in that aspect of his artistry.

His first venture as a lead singer was as the frontperson of his own punk band: Alexander F. Their lone, self-titled album came out in 2017, and the energy of the project and their live shows helped Toth to come into his own as a songwriter.

Yet an unfortunate accident at one of those Alexander F shows, involving spilled water and a broken foot, soon confined Toth to his apartment for an entire summer. At the same time, he was grieving the end of a decade-long relationship. He picked up his song-a-day practice yet again, and what spilled out was more intimate and more tender than anything he had done before.

Yet those same doubts and inhibitions confronted him as he was on the precipice of a creative realization. Over time, he learned to push them aside, just as he had done in the past, and Tōth was born.

His first two albums under the project’s umbrella, Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary and You and Me and Everything, were constructed through an intense process of narrowing down the large annals of music he had created and demoed out through his songwriting phases.

And the Voice Said, however, presented a more distinct challenge. By the time he felt comfortable assembling the project, he had well over 150 songs in hand. Figuring out the sound, and the direction he wanted the album to take, proved to be difficult. That is until Caroline Rose, who ultimately became the album’s co-producer, got involved.

“I narrowed it down from 150 [tracks] to like seventy-something, and then I sent it to a friend and he and I picked a group of songs… When [Caroline] and I started to work together, their song selection was pretty different from the one that me and my other friend had chosen…  The Tōth live show, in Caroline's opinion, is much more like my punk band’s shows. The Tōth live show is much more wild and unhinged. And Caroline really wanted that energy to make it onto this record. So they were really pushing me to sing out– bring the voice out, let the wildness free.”

Tōth’s newest project, therefore, represents almost a complete release of the inhibitions which had previously led him to restrain his songwriting.

The range the album showcases as a result is nothing short of striking. From the cascading wails on tracks like “Easy” to the mellow valleys of tracks like “Goo”, And the Voice Said is a testament to just how vast Toth’s artistic talent is.

More than that, though, And the Voice Said is proof of a triumph– a victory over the obstacles and the negative energies that so easily limit creative potency.

“The record really ties into that– overcoming the negative voices to act to literally. The negative voices saying, ‘You can't sing. You don't have a good voice.’ Interestingly, it's those negative messages and those painful feelings of not being okay with myself that, by facing them and working through them, become the material itself, become the source of light, become the energy, become the message.”