Single Review: Alex Krawczyk – “Love Through Sound”

MTS Records, 2025

Alex Krawczyk doesn’t shout. She doesn’t storm the barricades or burn the chapel. She hums the hymns and lets the listener come to her—again. On “Love Through Sound”, released on Jerry Garcia’s birthday (yes, intentional), the Canadian folk-pop singer-songwriter offers a soft-focus, lovingly rendered homage to the idea of music as connective tissue. It’s not protest music, nor is it escapist. It’s something gentler and potentially more subversive in its simplicity: a celebration of shared feeling through melody and myth.

Krawczyk and longtime collaborator Robbie Roth aren’t new to the formula. Their past work dabbled in the same space—earnest, melodic, never flashy. But here, the mission is clearer, and oddly enough, bolder. The track’s lyrical structure leans into Grateful Dead references with a kind of wink-wink reverence that might make your average Deadhead smirk and nod at the same time. “Casey Jones,” “Cumberland mine,” “Uncle Sam’s blues”—they’re not name-dropped as souvenirs, but as sacred artifacts. The song isn’t about the Grateful Dead, but about what they represented: communion through music. It’s not revolutionary, but it is real.

Musically, the track works because it refuses to overplay its hand. Robbie Roth (production, acoustic and lead guitar, backing vocals) surrounds Krawczyk’s feather-light voice with tasteful arrangement: Tim Bovaconti and Caroline Marie Brooks handle electric guitar duties, Devon Henderson lays down a solid, low-key bassline, and Davide DiRenzo keeps rhythm with brushes more than sticks. Robbie Grunwald adds just enough keyboard to give the thing lift. The result is a lush but unintrusive soundscape—organic, analog, and perfectly suited for the sentiment.

Krawczyk herself remains both the strength and limitation of the track. Her voice, while never acrobatic, is endearing and clean. There’s no tremble, no rasp, no edge. It’s not bland—it’s clear. And clarity in this case reads as warmth. But it also means the track floats where others might bite. The repetition of the phrase “love through sound” works as mantra, but the melody doesn’t change much from verse to verse, and the emotional peak never quite arrives. It’s a gentle wave that never crashes.

That said, there’s something admirable in its restraint. In a music landscape increasingly clogged with maximalist posturing and emotional overkill, “Love Through Sound” finds power in understatement. It asks you to lean in, not to lean back. The track’s spiritual center is more real than faux, more humble than grandiose. If Krawczyk sometimes feels like she’s crafting background music for golden hour drives and meditative playlists, she’s also making space for listeners to fill in their own meaning.

So no, it won’t break charts. It won’t break hearts either. But it might break a little ground by reminding us that not all tributes need to wear flowers in their hair or scream through distortion pedals. Sometimes love—and music—flows best in whispers.

 Consumer advisory: For folk-pop romantics and quiet revolutionaries. Deadheads welcome.

–Bobby Chrisman