Why Alex G Should and Shouldn’t Be Our Selfish Secret

(SANDY) Alex G’s name has become recognizable enough that it has typecast a rather unbecoming local association: that he, in the footsteps of Elliott Smith, is the crowned prince of the indie sad boy stereotype. The reductive labels that color these self-defeating reputations are largely drawn from generalizations about an artist’s fan base rather than the output itself. It doesn’t much help that a whole substream of modern indie/alternative music has adopted Alex G as its guiding father (although surely not to say that Alex G’s style was pulled from thin air). Still, the brand that surrounds superficial white boy sadness only serves to obstruct a genuine appreciation for Alex G as an artist and an individual.

The immediacy of what Alex G has to offer becomes apparent at the right time. His music has always struck me as especially time-specific, like something you might stumble upon when you’re not looking, yet it’s exactly what you need. Certain songs suit themselves to the moments when your heart just burns to hear them. I have a friend who hasn’t listened to his favorite Alex G song in almost two years (for the record, I think this a little crazy). However, it’s quite possible for someone to hear one of his song at a given time – the dissonant chords and sandpaper harmonies – and write it off as an empty sad boy indulgence. You might know a few of these people and that’s quite alright, because nothing in music will ever be universal. Or you might be like me, and have more than a few friends who readily worship at the shrine of Alex G to praise him in all his glory of musical expression. He’s got that artistic kind of idiosyncrasy that is so very lovable. Quirky is the wrong word for it – what makes him so special is the way he’s distinctly himself all the time, and his ability to convey that uniqueness through recording is what makes him so talented.

To listen to Alex G is to feel the breadth of his personality. His style of communication feels both lyrically vague and poignantly precise at the same time. In an album, he stretches the complexion of his individuality and the fluctuating attitudes of unpolished emotion common to every personality. Take, for example, tracks like “Brick” and “Horse” off his latest record Rocket from last year, or the opening screech of “Black Hair” off DSU (2014). Those abrasive bursts of noise – not the bland whimpers of a self-pitying, shoe-gazing stereotype, but the jagged screams of someone angry and in your ear with rage – so starkly compliment the delicacy of “Thorns,” “Bobby,” or “Change.” Each disparate, dissonant piece fits together to offer us a glimpse of his personality, zoomed out from a more just perspective. And while it would be too great an expectation for an artist to crave total understanding, it does seem valid to strive for a sympathetic interpretation. As is the case with most good people, the better we can understand them, the easier it becomes to sympathize.

While his screamers might not be his catchiest melodies or his top plays on Spotify, they can still be appreciated as objects of his creation and pieces of the puzzle. When his band played the Ace Hotel Theatre in Downtown L.A. last Tuesday, those bursts of rage turned out to be some of the most satisfying moments of the show. In the face of a less than encouraging and barely half-full crowd, the red-faced screams on a track like “Brick” were strangely comforting. It was Alex G staying true to himself in spite of an atmosphere that was more or less unfamiliar.

Set to share the bill with uber-tight bruins of Philadelphia lo-fi Dr. Dog as “Special Guest (SANDY) Alex G,” it was hard to get past the feeling that he was more of an opener to loosen up than something of a main attraction. I originally planned to cover what seemed like a killer one-two punch of Philadelphia’s best (Alex G being a Philly boy himself) at the Observatory in Santa Ana, until Alex G ended up missing the show when he couldn’t get back from Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival in time. Located amongst the lot of gorgeous old-school theaters that line the Theatre District’s Broadway strip in Downtown, the Ace Hotel Theatre in Los Angeles at first seemed like an infinitely preferable spot for Alex G to kick off the Dr. Dog tour than the boring Orange County business park of the Observatory. Despite the glamour of the vintage L.A. venue, The Ace did not feel much like an ideal venue for his live band at all. In the first place, the upper balcony of the theatre is so steeply vertical that the amount of open space – and seats – to fill is vacuously formidable. The draw of the show-not-to-be at the Observatory was a general admission ticket on flat, solid ground. Assigned seating like that at The Ace is almost never the way to go. It’s easy to feel too far removed from everything happening onstage. After last seeing Alex G at a small club in Toronto, standing a few feet away from him in a room packed with cult-like disciples requesting even his most obscure songs and still knowing every word, my seat in the upper balcony of The Ace Hotel felt like miles away.

Zoomed from the upper balcony

In spite of the distance, however, I think that to really love an artist requires making their best interests your own. That’s why we don’t get to complain when our favorite bands don’t want to keep churning out the same hit record over and over again. In Alex G’s case, a musician who has reached unprecedented levels of success all from a career launched on Bandcamp and songs recorded in his room, he deserves to be making money and enough at that to comfortably sustain his career making music. He definitely is the modern king of do-it-yourself recording and that’s the perfect landscape for his talents to shine through. A tour opening for a well established band, not to mention Philly compatriots like Dr. Dog, probably sounded like a right move to widen his outreach. It stung to think that the way it turned out could have been working against him.

Alex G’s live performance requires certain sacrifices that seemed to undermine the benefits of a well-intentioned tour. On top of forsaking the intimacy that is so central to his style by playing such a large venue, Alex G himself has admitted his natural aptitude to be that for the recording process. He’s just really good at making songs with his laptop, some microphones, and a bunch of instruments. It can’t be stressed enough how significant it is that pretty much every sound on an Alex G recording is of his own device. Playing all the instruments – drums, bass, keys, guitar, and banjo – has facilitated his development as a well-rounded musician and, without a doubt, given him a more thorough understanding of music as a medium. That kind of creative control elevates his music to a level of personalization that his live performance is forced to let go of. Although the members of his touring band are all solid musicians and there is definitely something to be said of the fruits of collaboration when playing with a band, that dissonantly delightful texture of his recordings was missing from the live show. The pressure to play live comes from the structure of the music industry today, there being far less money to be made from the release of an album than a ticketed concert in the age of streaming and free downloads. And although it’s unfair to expect a live show to be identical to an album, it didn’t help that Dr. Dog was simply awesome and sounded maybe even tighter than they do on their records. The five-piece Dr. Dog was a spectacle, with smoke machines, fancy lighting, and everything as they rocked out for a crowd brought out of their seats. Alex G’s four-piece band was significantly less commanding – the sound of his band’s makeshift set-up at the front of stage much quieter than that which would come from Dr. Dog’s more massive rig behind. His people probably should’ve known better than to have him go on right at eight when playing a show in LA… everybody runs late (including my friend and I).

Sneaking down to a couple of empty seats in the lower level for Dr. Dog was a necessary upgrade

Alex G played a good chunk of Rocket on top of a few tracks from Beach Music (2015), Trick (2012), and DSU (2014). The first song we heard was “Proud.” On the record, I love that song. The lyrics, the piano, and the way his boxy, double-tracked acoustic guitar comes through with the rust of his harmonies and the kick of his drums make the song a perfect whole. I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed when my favorite part – the climactic chord break after the chorus – was pretty much lost in the translation of a live performance. The wobbly violin and the two-part duet of “Bobby” were similarly missed in their absence. Trading up for a drop-D tuned electric guitar, “Bug” was a highlight of the live show in the same, solid way it chugs along on the record. “Bug” is a track that can feel as triumphant as walking out of your last final exam in the way it bottles up that golden feeling of ‘me vs. the world’ – it bursts at the seams while keeping its gleeful air of subtlety. Sitting down at the keyboard, his choice to close with ‘Guilty’ was a good one. The fans who had been yelling praises at him between songs took to shouting requests, in which he replied with a chuckle that “we don’t do that anymore.” Bummer.

In spite of all that, all was redeemed for this Alex G lover when I saw him in the lobby after the show. I told him that my friend and I play some of his songs when we busk at the Berkeley Farmers Market and people seemed to really like them, so I thanked him for that. Amidst a blur of a conversation, I managed to ask him a few questions that I actually really wanted an answer to. “What do you record first? Drums or guitar? How did you get this keyboard part? Where do you put your microphones on the drum set? Do you always record with the metronome?” I walked away feeling like we had a pretty meaningful interaction, considering the circumstances, and with a few useful tips going forward. After all, he is still the king of that stuff. But really, Alex G is down to earth and a just really cool guy.