The City I Set On Fire

Unfolding My Present While Reclaiming My Past

I’m currently in Mexico, where I’ve started a two-week work-cation to get some well-needed rest while setting the details of the next 12-18 months related to the projects I would like to give life to. It’s a very fulfilling season for me, and to be away for a short trip is the best scenario for me to keep on dreaming it all over again…

I’m residing in a fairly remote hotel, located in a natural complex designed to preserve the environment and to protect endangered species. It’s beautifully quiet, without much to do… Let’s just say that I don’t really fit into any elements of the otherwise pretty obviously targeted demographic…! I haven’t seen anyone wearing punk band t-shirts just yet nor many tattoos either — I’m clearly the anomaly. And it’s perfect like that, it’s exactly the reason why I like to come here so much and why I keep coming back every occasion I have to spend a moment around here, as it’s so incredibly inspiring in terms of atmosphere and surroundings. It helps me to reflect and muse in a different way, in an offbeat type of rhythm, which is exactly what I am presently looking for.

Mexican living in slow-motion

I realized something important at the beginning of the year, and it’s the fact that, in order to truly unfold the full extent of my present emancipation and to act upon my actual intentionality, I had to make peace with my past and reclaim the most significant elements that contributed to making my journey what it is today, which for me is mainly my music, my words, my projects… To revisit my tenure with Your Favorite Enemies was essential in that sense, especially as it represents 12 years of my life, and 2026 will mark the 20th anniversary of the band’s inception… It’s crazy just to think about it.

I guess for me, it became real when I decided to play some YFE songs during the last stretch of dates I had. It was special to have a short YFE segment of 4 songs during the last concert of the tour in Bocholt, with City on Fire, Empire of Sorrows, 1-2-3 (One Step Away) and From the City to the Ocean… Not only was I at peace with sharing those songs with our people, but I was really happy that I took the decision to do so. It was significantly touching for me and even more so when I saw the audience’s enthusiasm when I explained what those songs were about, the context, and all… It was also kind of funny considering that they are by far the shortest ones of the set!

Digital release on December 5, with a limited-edition LP available on December 10

One of the songs I particularly liked to play was City On Fire. I initially released it on a record titled Vague Souvenir on July 31st of 2012. Since the album was made of deeply personal subjects, consisting of spoken words and biographical material, it was supposed to be a solo project, but I finally decided to release it under YFE, as I knew somehow that if I were to release the record under my name, it would put me on a path I wasn’t ready to engage in, one that would see me moving forward and away from the band and the already pretty toxic environment it was locked into. I think that staying with the band had more to do with preventing me from leaving the community we were all part of at the time… Everything was mixed up and messed up. It would have been running away… So I decided to stay and try to fix whatever was still salvageable. I ultimately lost myself in the process, which was a major price to pay, thinking about it now.

I rarely listen back to or watch again any of the projects I give life to, for all the good and wrong reasons, I suppose. But for a while, Vague Souvenir was a record I was listening to from time to time. The guys didn’t like it that much — they also had their reasons not to. It was clearly a random UFO in the band’s discography, the first one before it became a sort of norm for me to do so! It’s also special to hear myself on that record… It sounds like a stranger, someone so remote from the artist I became. My voice represented the person I was back then: timid, introverted, fragile, and vulnerable. If I’m not totally healed from the stigmata of that period, I can finally appreciate the honesty that every one of those words and sounds was born from, as if they represent the mirror I trapped myself behind back in the day. They have become the incarnation of a determination I always had to break free from my prison of glass…

The cover of the album Vague Souvenir, released in 2012

That being said, releasing City On Fire is part of that healing process for me, and knowing how much I like to share a new project with you at the end of the year to thank you for everything we communed together over the course of the last 12 months, City On Fire was a meaningful choice, particularly its live version recorded at the Veruno 2 Days Prog + 1 Festival, a rendition I found profoundly emotional with the presence of Octavia who is in charge of the festival’s social medias and whose fight against cancer moved me in a very special way. It was therefore important for me to invite her on stage so she could share her inspiring story with the crowd, as I believed it perfectly represented the soul of the unique community spirit that the 2 Days Prog + 1 Festival is about… That poignant moment of life celebration became a staple of 2025 for me, a vivid instant of pure humanity I wanted to magnify with you all. To see it resonate beyond that live show was a magistral occasion to let it flow, to make it eternal.

With Octavia on stage at the 2 Days Prog + 1 Festival

Life creates life!

Your friend and brother,

Alex

PS: Starting next week, I will do an introspective recap of the last tour. I wanted to take a moment to let it grow within me before writing about it…