St. Lenox

St. Lenox - "Bitter Pill" - Top-10 Best Songs of the Year (#9). - VICE/Noisey

“It’s hard to believe that Andy Choi, the gigantic voice behind St. Lenox, was an award-winning teenage violinist. That was back in the mid-’90s, a time the New York songwriter romanticizes to charming effect throughout his debut album, Ten Songs About Memory And Hope … He belts out his regrets with uncanny melisma, like John Darnielle channeling Tony Clifton. As odd as it sounds, it’s a genuinely affecting affect.” - NPR

I burst into tears—big, ugly, inescapable, unbidden tears that felt like they had been stored up for ages. St. Lenox's music has that effect. It's too real to be cool. You don't listen to it to set a "vibe"; you play it and stumble into revelations, hit nerves that you may not have been ready to hit. That's not to say it's sad and dark and horrible. It's just more or less like life itself, which is uncertain and plodding and often finds moments of humor emerging right alongside moments of sadness. - VICE / Noisey

... feels like a piece of writing or a poem, beautifully illustrating that choke in your throat you get when you’re reminded of the past and the way things used to be ... following in the trajectory of other great story tellers in music, kind of reminding me of a blend of Rufus Wainwright and the Mountain Goats. - VICE / Noisey

“The foremost thing here is the voice. It’s fluent, yanking melodies out of lines overstuffed with words… How did Andy Choi develop this helium-dosed soar, somewhere between honest tabernacle rafter-shaking and a jumbo mumble? … confessions include Mountain Goatsesque fictions … detailed memories with slightly sci-fi skews of the present … But he belts them with an utter lack of guile … You want to hang out with the guy. You want to hear him talk.” - Dusted Magazine

“a mournful laptop/singing act that features odd but slowly ingratiating melodies and time signatures, not to mention Choi’s tear-stained, journal-like lyrics that spill out and around the songs. Live, it can be arrestingly intense or just curious, depending on your ability to let love in, as Nick Cave might say. And actually, there’s a darkness to St. Lenox that probably means he has a few Cave CDs on his shelves.” - College Music Journal

“Let it be known to the uninitiated Mr. Choi possesses a powerful, and frankly enviable croon … a la Jeff Buckley or Rufus Wainwright. Vocal intonations aside, Ten Songs could survive on its own in the hands of virtually any mouthpiece utilizing Choi’s ornate, slice-of-life by way of stream-of-consciousness narratives. … Too complex to be cast off a as a mere pop album.” - Willfully Obscure

"Not only does Andy Choi (aka St. Lenox) have one of the most unique voices you'll hear, but his approach to songwriting is equally as unique ... part street poet, part anti-folk singer ... Expect more of the same when St. Lenox releases '10 Songs About Memory' this year." - The Big Takeover

"Electronica (or is this folktronica?) from an NYC via Columbus dude. Not what you’d normally expect from the Anyway label but this is good." - Daggerzine

"It only takes a half minute or so of jamming “I Still Dream of the 90′s” to realize that Choi writes about whatever he darn well pleases – influenced by the probings of pretty much nobody... St Lenox is a bit of an enigma." - Ryan Getz (IAmTunedUp.com) - I Am Tuned Up

"a bit like Gavin DeGraw ... other times he sounds a bit like a young Phil Collins. He’s dabbled in folktronica, r&b, and jazz-and he seems to do them all pretty well. - Music. Defined.

I grabbed a jacket and was headed north, but as I walked by Below Zero Lounge, I heard a voice too great not to stop. If Ryan Adams and Adam Levine and the bearded lead singer from Maps & Atlases had an Asian baby, it would be St. Lenox. He was just plain awesome. I wanted to hang out with him, I wanted him to sing an album of lullabies. - CityBeat

With influences that range from classical to pop and electronica to jazz, the music of St. Lenox creates an eclectic listening experience for the audience. - Sonicbids

Choi’s elastic vocals ... sound like a quirkier version of Cee Lo Green’s ... Soul Coughing caught in a colorful computer game, with “Make even stranger Pop” their only directive to finding their way out. - CityBeat

St. Lenox ... sprays soulful vocals about a failed relationship over one of those 1970s keyboard progressions that screams of washed out bedrooms and pixelated afternoon television. The R & B vibe hangs as the corners, but the other influences are hard to place, an arrangement that denies easy treatment ... It's immensely memorable, a hook you want to sing and sing again, a brilliant slice of pop in a tiny package. - 32 ft/second

Ring Alexander walks in and says something to the effect of "Wow this guy's kind of interesting - he just says what he's saying."... Really there is something in this man's songwriting that lets the world speak for itself... the closest analog to St. Lenox's musical/poetic sensibility is the ancient bard. - The New York Antifolk Festival

Really unique and different than anything I’ve experienced live in quite a long time. - Donewaiting

St. Lenox probably has more in common with the Magnetic Fields than his classical background... he belted out prosaic verses... in a voice reminiscent of Stevie Wonder. - OhioNYC

St. Lenox validates all those emotions that thoughts of your hometown bring up and which you think are too sappy to reveal. Maybe its rides on Greyhound buses... or the images of crucifixion that pop up now and then in our dealings with the world. Envision a golden-throated jazz crooner singing mercurial melodies over skittery electronic compositions played off an iPhone. St. Lenox sits on a stool, bathed in pale blue stage lights, sounding like a beautiful robot from the future. - The Deli Magazine

“Now, I definitely could be listening to a lot more music than I have been, but the simple truth is that I haven’t heard anything as great as St. Lenox in a long, long time. St. Lenox–whose alter ego is award-winning violinist Andy Choi–has put out a record that I cannot stop listening to. The fact that it’s a debut makes it all the more impressive … Choi sounds like some kind of Rufus Wainwright-Adele love child, and his larger-than-life vocals are the perfect foil for his songs’ minimal arrangements. And those songs–hoo boy. John Darnielle said it best: “feeling really evangelical about just how good a lyricist Andy Choi is. real vision and feeling. - Music for Robots

St. Lenox is Andy Choi, a New York lawyer and Juilliard-trained concert violinist whose extremely distinct music is equal parts jarring and charming. Choi’s voice is one of the most striking instruments in music today, a harsh and commanding howl that reminds me of John Darnielle, Michael Stipe, and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart but is something entirely its own. His subject matter is equally transfixing and unique, a mix of queer love songs, protest music, and savvy observations about the modern American experience. His 2014 album 10 Songs About Memory And Hope For The Future has rightfully enjoyed slow-building buzz — I mean, just listen to the gripping “I Still Dream Of The ’90s” — and today he’s back with news of the follow-up.

Ten Hymns From My American Gothic is designed as a gift to Choi’s father, who immigrated to the United States from South Korea, in honor of his 70th birthday. It’s preceded by a video for lead single “Thurgood Marshall,” which unleashes Choi’s voice in rapid-fire tribute to the late Supreme Court justice against a crisp backbeat and a gradually intensifying pileup of keyboards and guitars. Director Elliot Lyman’s video tours through a library and adds new layers of busyness to the sensory overload. There’s a lot to unpack here, but before you think too hard about it, just sit back and enjoy. - Stereogum

The only thing more sweet than the story behind Andy Choi’s new album as St. Lenox might be the music within. Ten Hymns for American Gothic acts as the Korean American’s gift to his father for the elder Choi’s 70th birthday, and early preview “Thurgood Marshall” finds St. Lenox looking for inspiration from the first African-American Supreme Court justice. The lawyer/classically trained violinist builds off of layered keyboards, chiming guitar, and a snappy drumbeat, all led by his John Darnielle-like tumbled lyrics. Though it may not be your 70th birthday, you too can enjoy Ten Hymns from My American Gothic when it drops October 21st.–Adam Kivel - Consequence of Sound