An Exception, released in January 2026 by alternative rock artist I Forget Myself is not the sound of someone trying to keep up with trends. It is the sound of someone circling their own obsessions, refining them, and occasionally setting them on fire just to see what survives.
What immediately stands out about An Exception is how clean it sounds. Not sterile, not overproduced; just purposeful. The EP returns to a polished rock aesthetic that feels almost defiantly old-fashioned in a musical ecosystem obsessed with lo-fi authenticity and half-finished ideas. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a conscious choice to treat songwriting and sound design as crafts rather than vibes. Every synth swell, every guitar line, every carefully layered vocal feels like it has been placed exactly where it belongs, which is honestly more radical in 2026 than it probably should be.
I Forget Myself, born in South Africa, of European descent, and now based in Hong Kong after more than a decade in Asia, brings a quietly global sensibility to his music. That biography doesn’t show up as world-music clichés or genre tourism; instead, it manifests as a kind of restless hybridity. His songs never quite settle into one identity. They feel like they are always in transit, borrowing emotional textures from different places, different eras, and different versions of himself. As a longtime independent artist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who has spent years in various rock bands, he approaches solo work less like a lone genius and more like a one-person ensemble, constantly negotiating with his own influences.
That conversation starts in earnest with “Bygones,” which sounds like someone sat down with the entire Muse discography and distilled it into a single, hyper-focused blast of theatrical rock. But this isn’t imitation in the lazy sense. It captures what Muse at their best do so well: tension, release, and a kind of melodramatic urgency that somehow feels sincere. The song swells and collapses in on itself, using big gestures not to mask emptiness but to emphasize emotional weight. It feels like reckoning with the past while being slightly annoyed that it’s still there.
“Magna Catharsis” then takes a sharp left turn into something far more psychedelic. There’s a distinctly Pink Floyd Animals-era mood at the start; brooding, spacious, and politically anxious right up until the track suddenly leans into a full-blown rock pastiche complete with Jet-style guitar swagger. It’s an almost ridiculous shift, but that’s exactly why it works. The song feels like it’s arguing with itself about whether introspection or bravado is the better coping mechanism, and the answer, of course, is “both, at the same time.”
“I Dream Out An Exception” is where the EP really earns its title. This is space-rock done with genuine confidence, not just reverb and vague cosmic metaphors. The track floats, but it also drives forward, like something trying to escape gravity without losing momentum. There’s a sense of longing here that feels less romantic and more existential; the desire not just to be somewhere else, but to be someone else, even if only temporarily.
Finally, “Contexts,” the EP’s longest track, brings everything together with a subtle nod to Radiohead’s In Rainbows in the chord progressions. Not in terms of direct sound, but in its emotional texture: warm, melancholic, and quietly devastating. The song unfolds patiently, layering meaning as much as melody, and it leaves you with the unsettling realization that understanding yourself is often just a matter of changing the frame around the same old feelings.
An Exception doesn’t try to reinvent alternative rock. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it makes a far bolder claim: that careful, thoughtful, emotionally literate rock music still has something to say, if you’re willing to actually listen.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
