Chill out

If you like listening to Alice 96.5, you’ll probably get a kick out of the breezy, laid-back rock of The Mark Sexton Band.

Led by 19-year-old singer, guitarist and keyboardist Mark Sexton, the band has a surfer-rock sound layered with something vaguely reggae. Their album, Multiformity, practically swims in chillness. How chill? If I were a highly impulsive person listening to Multiformity, I might be inclined to buy an enormous bag of weed, stop shaving, move into a head-shop and turn my Honda into a convertible—with a Sawzall.

Joining Sexton, the equally youthful Alex Korostinsky plays bass guitar, sings backup and bangs on the miscellaneous percussion thingies every band of this type seems to have. Nineteen-year-old Dan Weiss rounds out the teenaged part of the roster with his cymbal-heavy drum work. Last, the comparatively ancient, 24-year-old Ryan Parrish gyrates around with a saxophone.

Sexton says the band is pursuing success with the sort of steely determination normally associated with doing your own dentistry.

“We are very, very serious,” he says. “Working as hard as we can to develop a big West Coast following. [Music] is what we all want to do, for sure.”