Released in late January of 2023, Alex Sloane’s Dear Diary provides a sharp and dramatic sonic experience with dance-pop elements, complex emotions, and creative production. The concept album takes the idea of a diary — something personal, secretive, and otherwise unspoken — and unravels it to produce a short story of longing and humility. Self-produced, mixed, and engineered, Dear Diary is Sloane’s completed premiere project as she makes her mark as an independent artist.
Despite the bubble-gum exterior, the scraped back layers show Sloane bore and exposed as her delicate vocals perform a captivating letter that was never meant to be read aloud. Dear Diary expresses the fears, insecurities, and mild arrogance of someone who is afraid of falling headfirst with someone they can’t stop thinking about.
The confessional EP demands answers to the questions we ask in the dark: Do they love me? Will I always be alone? Can anyone hear me when I scream? The title track, “Dear Diary”, plays “Everybody leaves me, someone’s always watching”, simultaneously manifests the fear of abandonment and fighting the discomfort of vulnerability. The repetitive lyrics play as a constant reminder that these insecurities continue to deepen as Sloane’s crush blossoms.
With an echo-chamber sound reflecting the entire EP, “Cute” provides shallow solutions to an unending cycle of a fragile ego. The fun, bubble-popping sound hides the hopeless attempts to keep her lover interested in her by keeping it “cute”. Sloane sings, “Tell me who you want me to be” to illustrate her willingness to change who she is to keep their attention.
In Dear Diary’s finale “Ily2m”, she repeats a fragile line “I think I’m gonna f*ck it up” expressing the insecurities and fears that make the EP an artistic showcase of human fragility when love turns manic. The shame and longing Sloane uncovers through Dear Diary remind us, despite our best attempts to keep ourselves together, of the feverish escape love can bring us.
Although Dear Diary is her first project with killer visuals and high-quality production, it showcases Sloane’s master-class skills and creative endeavors. Dear Diary leaves a limitless wonder of what Sloane is capable of and the kind of projects we should expect next from her.