“Nobody sings it like I do”: Stephen Sanchez on his “unicorn” of a debut album and a possible sequel

Stephen Sanchez‘s debut LP, Angel Face, tells the story of a love triangle between a 1950s singer named The Troubadour Sanchez, a woman named Evangeline and a mob boss named Hunter. Releasing a retro-sounding concept LP as your first album is a bold move, but Stephen says that’s the selling point.

“There aren’t a lot of artists doing what I’m doing, if any, at my age,” he tells ABC Audio. “I think it’s safe to say, with respect to other artists, that this is a very different record and I’m a very different artist. I mean, nobody is making ’60s-style music. Nobody’s making a conceptual record their first go-round that is in that style. And nobody sings it like I do, and no one’s doing it at [age] 20.”

That’s why the “Until I Found You” singer feels the album will really take off when he starts touring and fans can see the story play out onstage.

“I think people are going to come see the show live and, and see how much of a unicorn this record is, in the same way that they did with ‘Until I Found You,'” he predicts. “And I think it’s going to do some really great things for music and for the world.”

If you’re already a fan of Angel Face, which ends when Hunter guns down The Troubadour, there’s a sequel coming. “The death of The Troubadour, I don’t think it ends exactly just there,” he teases.

“I already have a story that I’m writing for this little extension piece to the record,” he reveals, calling it a Kill Bill-style story set in 1969, where Evangeline, driven insane with grief, has to track down Hunter in New York “before the police can save him from her wrath.”