We have something to satisfy your sonic thirst: Alex Orange Drink’s latest single, “Queen Victoria,” featuring Conor Oberst.
The first release from Alex Orange Drink — a.k.a. Alex Zarou Levine of Brooklyn punk band The So So Glos — off his upcoming album “Victory Lap (#23),” out May 9 via Oberst’s label Million Stars, traces memories of New York City’s “seedy part of town,” where he recalls “smoking blunts of PCP, laced with hope and THC.” These recollections shaped the song’s inception, symbolizing the end of a world without smartphones.
“It’s about walking a dangerous path toward self destruction,” Levine wrote on Instagram. “It’s about an empire passing away.”
“There’s a lot in there lyrically,” he told me. “Lots of nostalgia, loss of innocence, both personally and politically. A lot of lines that I write have multiple meanings. I’m a bit addicted to that in my lyrics.” One example: “When everyone you know cells out” functions as a triple entendre, referencing people glued to their cellphones, cancer cells multiplying, and the act of “selling out” commercially.
Levine wrote “Queen Victoria” while in Los Angeles in 2023, during the same period he collaborated with the Bright Eyes frontman on “Five Dice, All Threes,” where his voice appears on “Rainbow Overpass.” Shortly after, Levine was diagnosed with T4 cancer. Throughout his treatment — which he called a “primal time of survival and creative exorcism” — he recorded more than 50 solo songs and continued contributing to friends’ records.
“Victory Lap (#23),” the third solo release from Levine, is a 10-track album capturing the intensity of undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. Last fall, Levine unveiled the first single, “The Future’s a Riot,” with a music video featuring footage chronicling his diagnosis and early days of treatment. The album’s cover art shows the radiation mask he had to wear throughout his sessions, which he calls “the closest thing to torture I’ve ever experienced.”
Oberst joins in on the third verse of “Queen Victoria” but wanted to be involved from the outset. Together, they wrote a verse exploring resilience in the face of bleak cycles, referencing self-destructive habits, the infamous Waco siege, and the ‘catastrophic messianic’ destruction brought on by extreme belief. “It came really naturally,” Levine said. “Love ‘em.”
Juxtaposed with his personal experiences and lyrics like “Keep wishing you will die,” the song carries an undercurrent of defiant optimism. “No matter what you do, there seems to be some sort of seemingly insurmountable doom or some kind of self destruction that you can’t prevent,” Levine reflected. “It’s about fighting that feeling with all your might.”
The accompanying music video blends home movie footage — including his grandparents in the 1940s and his dad at the reopening of Ebinger’s Bakery in the 1970s — with American iconography and old New York, offering a deeply personal visual companion to the track.
But don’t just take my word for it — listen to “Queen Victoria” and hear a raw testament to endurance and reinvention for yourself.
Catch Alex Orange Drink live at the Fighting Through Cancer Benefit at Connolly’s Club 45 on Feb. 16, and at his record release show with Gymshorts (special guests to be announced) at Mercury Lounge on May 31.