Believe the Hype: ALG at Rickshaw Stop

On Thursday night, after submitting my two half-baked Session A finals and thus closing the door on a veritable lifetime of summer school, I slicked my hair back, donned a blazer, and set off towards Rickshaw Stop for the SF date of Alice Longyu Gao’s “The CEO Tour.” When we arrived at the venue, my partner and I extended our hands to receive those proverbial Sharpie X’s, railed two Yerba Mate’s at the bar, and began our stakeout in the pit, waiting to catch a first glimpse of the opener while anonymous pop songs and anticipation thickened the air.

The show commenced with Bay Area hyperpop project Digifae, as the duo weaved their way from their post at the merch table through the crowd to climb onstage. After some initial technical difficulties interspersed with nervous banter, audio burst from the PA and DJ Galen Tipton, also known as Recovery Girl, began to command the crowd. Having traversed the country from Ohio to San Francisco to play this set, Tipton’s talent overpowered the intimate venue. She mixed the backing tracks live, melding and maneuvering through song changes and drops as her local counterpart Diana Starshine sang original lyrics from their newly released self-titled album. Their vocals curiously lacked the signature crunchy autotune that the digicore genre is known for, but Tipton’s lightning-fast mastery mixed with Starshine’s high energy carried the duo through. Starshine was appropriately attired for the rave-type show in Nike compression shorts and a mesh top, but by halfway through the set both them and Galen were working up a sweat.

During the set, Stashine remarked on their trajectory from an adoring fan seeing Charli XCX live at Rickshaw Stop to now playing on the same stage—a testament to the importance of local venues like Rickshaw, which strive to combine acts both near and far and help to maintain a thriving music ecosystem. The music in the set reflected this multiplicity, darting from a tribute to Charli herself to a hyperpop retake of Kate Bush and even a brief dalliance with Lil Yachty’s “Poland.”

The tech changeover from Digifae to Alice Longyu Gao was painless, as both acts brought only enough equipment to fill a 6-foot foldable table—with the unexpected exception of a harp poised at stage right for the headliner set. It was my second time seeing a harp onstage at the same venue, the first being Luna Li in October. But the genre of this show differed quite drastically from the former’s multi-instrumental indie pop set. Finding its closest relative in the music of 100 gecs, ALG’s electronic elegies provided an interesting soundscape for a classical instrument to navigate. Nevertheless, it was the harp that the artist perched behind during xyr opening number, a saccharine starter before a frenzied feast.

A kitschy, queer, unapologetic artist, Gao catalyzed her set with the brazen title track of her newest record Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, and Retire. At the final precipice of Pride month and amidst the defense of discriminatory legislation towards LGBTQ individuals by the Supreme Court, the song and set as a whole took on an additional urgency. In sing-songy fashion, the artist encouraged the audience to “imagine a world with no heteros,” an alternate reality in which rhinestones and pronouns reign supreme. 

In contrast with the larger-than-life, cutthroat character xyr music makes xem out to be, ALG was a charming, casual, and empathetic host throughout the night. She shared that her music falls into multiple different categories, encapsulating her past, present, fictional, and future lives. Kicking off the segment about xyr past life was “Hëłłœ Kįttÿ,” a gruesome anthem about slashing the tires and digging the graves of one’s enemies, wielding the cheery motif of Hello Kitty to symbolize a lifetime of forced compliance igniting destructive violence.

This theme appears throughout ALG’s discography, an overt reference to the model minority myth and perceptions of Asian people as passive and apolitical. The extreme, contradictory identities present across her discography point to the consequences of living life on the periphery, always the other, yet striving for centrality and recognition by any means possible. “Come 2 Brazil” paints an image of Gao with wealth and fame beyond compare, while in “100 Boyfriends” xe threatens: “you’re rich, so I rob you/steal your car, take it at once.” This overwhelming effusion of individualist beliefs contrasts with the artist’s background as a chronically online queer Chinese immigrant, and emerges as a critique of material wealth.

ALG’s music also touches on the objectification of Asian bodies and fetishization of Asian aesthetics in songs such as “I <3 Harajuku” and “MAKE U 3 ME.” Xe confronts the listener cloyingly, playing on these stereotypical roles, before revealing her true intentions: “Got my gun I shoot your face, fill your nose with pepper spray.” For ALG, hyperfemininity is her greatest weapon, and she dons it nightly like drag.

Gao guided the elated audience through operatic interludes and hardcore breakdowns, waving her arms like a symphonic conductor and giggling all the way. “You are listening to the future of music!” xe exclaimed as xe plucked out frantic, atonal scales on the harp and pounded out crunchy beats on a drum pad. Throughout the set she claimed to have invented both music and the English language, coining new terms such as “white boy princess,” referred to xemself as “Asian Taylor Swift,” and revealed that the only other individuals accompanying her on tour were her roommate and her mom. Xe closed the set with a reprise of “Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, and Retire” in the form of its original bedroom demo, and dismounted the stage without encore, choosing instead to meet and interact with those who had attended the show.

Article and photos by Sophia Shen