Alex g Sandy

No thread? Think this guy is pretty good.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7rmjK80UpzID0dRwlV1LVw?si=4aF-Vij5QxC1pBd1Es7NUA

https://open.spotify.com/track/1CRq2M7Tq4dl7Bwif65doB?si=-kXzaZWJSbe-hZ0sd3P8rA

Crooked vibes

https://open.spotify.com/track/0J3fUMKfyeH6lQ6u7a2jnj?si=RuA6a8iUTpG8EIOvHgA_1Q

Surprised there isn't a thread for him yet either. Not a fan, at all - I had heard the name a lot in early 2015 so I went to see him down the street in April. Zero charisma, almost an anti-charisma, and no songs, nothing that touched me at all, total blank. It was like watching a deflated, imploding Mac DeMarco. I left after six songs.

Since then he's risen in stature/become more popular, made a fantastic guest spot with Frank Ocean on "Ivy," and put out a record last year right? Anyway I saw him again last December because the Alex G band was opening for Animal Collective playing Sung Tongs all the way through for the first time. This was a p4k birthday party/show, vibe was very antiseptic but because it was a special AC show most of the crowd either worked for p4k or had like flown from Austin or Europe to see AC. So I was up real close for Alex G's whole set and it was just in one ear out the other. I don't get it at all. Nothing grabbed me or even came close to it. Not my frequency I guess. It was cool when he was playing piano and screaming though.

I wasn’t sold on him prior to Rocket but Bobby and particularly Sportstar made me do a 180 degree take on him.

I know it doesn’t make damn sense but Sportstar reminds me of Blink 182 of all people. I guess somethig about the chords and with that filter his voice reminds me of the whiny sounding one, Tom? I think.

this song is gr8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vxOzwDEXv0

I loooooove Rocket. I remember trying to vote for it in the EOY ILM poll but no one nominated it :(

And yeah Proud and Bobby are awesome

My POX:
Rules
Proud
Bobby
Kicker
Salt
Serpent Is Lord
Black Hair
After Ur Gone
Soaker
Hollow

I love Sandy Alex G

That's Rostam playing guitar on "Ivy". Alex is conspicuous on the tracks from Endless-- "Slide On Me" and "Higgs" i.e.

I don't have incredible patience for the records he made prior to Beach Music, but I love that album and Rocket. I hope he starts sometime writing lyrics that don't just have an "I am kind of creepy" thesis. His band is amazing, his lead guitarist reminds me of US Maple.

yeah, i dig this dude. DSU was good. Rocket was a grower. and this was one of 2017's best songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPuxLpVus-k

gretel is my favorite thing he's ever done, but im 15 seconds into the new one and im already cringing

ok it got better, but i'd advise everyone listening to skip the first 15 seconds or so of this

what "new one" are you referring to?

new album house of sugar, out today

First track kind of sounds like early Animal Collective but in a bad way.

Gretel is the best one in here. Guitar heavily reminds me of a 90’s act, possibly Stone Temple Pilots?

Bad Man and previous singles are also a highlight.

the singles are definitely the highlights agreed, still love gretel and southern sky. the rest of the album is more vibe-oriented, with the occasional jolt out of the trance with either a great lyric or a bizarre vocal decision.

we gotta fix this thread title

Hard to figure out what this dude wants to grow into, but I do think Bobby is one of the more beautiful songs I've ever listened to. I mostly get the sense that his peer group is overly supportive and he has nobody doing the gatekeeping: His forays into experimentalism or genre extension tend to be just really, really bad.

I mostly get the sense that his peer group is overly supportive

Yes god save us all from overly supportive peer groups

I get what you're saying tho, I myself think some of his best songs are born out of genre experiments though ("Salt") even if they don't all work all the time

this was a slow burn but is in contention for my aoty now

alex g is the best song writer of his generation, ilx is sleepin. Lot of duds throughout his discography but he when he hits the nail on the head, holy fuck. he's got so many tracks that are unfuckwithable. for starters

kicker
harvey
gnaw (he recorded this in high school for god's sake)
salt
hope
gretel
southern sky
bobby

if you aren't convinced that this guy is something special watch videos of him playing his songs solo acoustic. these are all-time songs, the kind of songs somebody can sing around a campfire and it still fuckin hits

like this video of him in a high school stairwell singing a song that he never even released. he's the real deal, a genius of song writing. protect alex g at all costs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnW2x1VZdkY

https://i.imgur.com/IVRwpDa.png

New joint smokes

house of sugar has quietly become one of my fav albums of the past decade. haven't really dug into the rest of his discog yet

The new one is also, unsurprisingly, quite good."No Bitterness" is a favorite. Although the vocal processing/autotune is starting to feel like almost perfunctory, like he's afraid if he doesn't use it he'll become too normie or something.

Actually I take it back, the auto tune is often key, especially when he uses it in the higher registers and makes his voice sound like a robot flute

Finally listened to this tonight. Better than I expected. Interesting interview a little bit ago in NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/arts/music/alex-g-god-save-the-animals.html

Still, for all his DIY bona fides, Alex’s influences often skew surprisingly mainstream. At the park, Alex said the production on “Blessing” was inspired by a song he became obsessed with while working on “God Save the Animals,” which he’d listen to endlessly on loop. I leaned in, expecting him to name-drop some obscure, crate-dug rarity.

“It was this song ‘Like a Stone’ by Audioslave,” Alex said. “It came on the radio one night and I was like, ‘What the …? This is the best thing I’ve ever heard!’”

“Blessing” is an outlier sonically, though not thematically, on the new album

aint it easy

so i've never really vibed with alex g before, but i'm loving the shit out of this new one. trying to figure out why, but i think it probably is related to his love of that audioslave song. a lot of these sound like that era of vh1-ready rock filtered through a funhouse mirror (or maybe a depressionhouse mirror?)

"Runner" sounds a lot like Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train"

This guy is mega talented. Always simple riffs and legitimate songs but with a creative/experimental edge that never sounds quite like anything I hear from anyone else.

The first track on the new album actually made me say "motherfucker!" out loud because i couldn't believe how good it was. there's something about those autotuned pitch-shifted vocals that hits harder than if he used his own voice or that of a female vocalist

so far the rest of the album isn't reaching that high but maybe it'll grow on me!

Just picked on this latest LP. Never even heard of the guy before. Listening to see if I'm interested in a local festival he's at. This is good. As well as Big Star and Frank Black, I can hear a lot of Mogwai.

house of sugar is really good too it turns out, i've been missing out

a friend is into rocket so i'm checking it out. this guy is onto something. the songwriting is good. i can hear us maple or thinking fellers or something but packaged into earworms. the lyrics are where it's at for me though. he has seen some things and is good at putting that across. also maybe he reminds me of beck but replace "i'm cool" with "i'm traumatized and earnest". also stuff about manhood for the youngsters, working thru dad issues kind of. straight i guess but this is very queer-whistling. i hope he creates something really transcendent at some point. whatever that means. i'll have to listen to the new one.

lyrics remind me of kurt cobain tbh

if he ever tours in your area you should see him live -- i run hot and cold on his recordings but the live show is really fantastic, esp hearing the way he plays the earlier lo-fi songs w/ the fleshed out band, bending it towards the fuller sound of the recent projects. i like the last album a good deal, "mission" is amazing

cool, thanks for the tip.

i think the most recent two are his best, his arrangements are getting more out-there in a good way

love this song. especially what it does at the end. so cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcO-NPtj5BI

damn

Dope track

That may be my favorite track by him, hits that odd sinister-melancholy axis that he excels at

I disagree with the upthread comments saying he's hit or miss or patchy and agree with the post saying he's slept on. The albums (th 4 or 5 I know) are a great listen. Excellent songs (the "hits"?) are put together with instrumental bits, jams and instrumentals (the patchy bits I guess) and so on but it really works. I understand he sells really well on vinyl and it makes sense because the albums work really well as a total listen. There's a lot for old farts like me to enjoy if you appreciate Syd Barrett, Neil Young, TV Personalities, Elliot Smith etc at their more esoteric. The soundtrack for "I Saw The TV Glow" was also excellent, though I only experienced it while watching the movie. Haven't listened to it on it's own yet but will do so soon.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2lYMMEMFPzxSs5cMD9qIsK?si=Aicts_qqT66xI6NTrtbIhg&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A5SJXPM1Haxxp4DuXoOBQIb

Some overlap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt0Z9RZkg-4

leaning more into folk-rock this time, but still full of weird (positive) production choices

yay
Nice tune

rca records, eh?

really like this one, leaning into the "big music" thing could be an interesting turn for him

I like the video

yeah good video, good tune. What's "big music"?

to me it means "music that sounds like the bandd the waterboys"

discussion here
What Is 'Big Music'?

It's kind of funny to me that this is his major label debut but it sounds less accessible than "Runner", which AFAIK is the most "pop" he's ever been

xp interesting

new album didn't leave much impression on first listen, it's leaning more into the mellow singer-songwriter side of his sound, and the more experimental tracks aren't as successful as before

yeah his singer-songwriter albums tend to wash over me, not really in a bad way. it's pretty good imo, if a (significant) step down from god save the animals

yeah god save the animals was one of his best and this is just alright

I could be convinced "Real Thing" is a cover of an Elliott Smith deep cut recently uncovered. Guitar lines and vocal melody really pulling water from the same well

minus that one discordant first chord in the coda progression

Liked "June Guitar," but am lukewarm about the album. Enjoyed 2019 House of Sugar recently, where the sound and vibe just washed over me, without trying to find stand alone songs.

to be fair, lukewarm is also how Alex sounds about his albums

this sounds like a faye webster album

i like this one on first listen. he's very consistent album-to-album to my ears. house of sugar is still my favorite but might just be because it was the first one i heard

dunno whats going on in "far and wide" with either the production or the vocals but i love it

You can ID an Alex G song after twenty seconds. One of the most consistently excellent album makers we have. Somewhere in the lineage of REM and Elliott Smith but wholly his own. Never dull. Never far from his first album, yet constantly evolving.