Photo courtesy of Alex G/Domino
The only other consistent thing in life besides the sun coming up is a new Alex G album. The singer-songwriter, whose full name is Alexander Giannascoli, has been releasing albums for more than a decade. With each album comes a methodical evolution of the signature sound he created on cult classics like “Race” and “Beach Music.” On his tenth album, “God Save The Animals,” Alex has shed the cape of the “son of Eliott Smith” without abandoning it completely, making it one of the best albums of his already sprawling career. It’s an album that evolves with the times and brings a new angle to his 100+ song discography, but does not desert the sound that got him here in the first place.
Religious motifs and allegories are spread through the album, yet, when asked about these themes, Alex claimed his approach to writing about religion was not different from his approach to songwriting in his previous albums
“A few people that I’m close to became religious. It made me wonder what they found. I love exploring those concepts lyrically because I don’t have to have any answers,” he said in an interview with Pitchfork.
While Alex does not have the answers, he desperately tries to approach them in every song. In the 90s alt-rock throwback “Runner,” Alex’s passionate voice croons, “I like people who I can open up to/Who don’t judge for what I say, but judge me for what I do.” While you can never take his lyrics at face value, these lines and the rest of “Runner” do not feel like Alex wrote them through the mouth of a different character, as they often are. “Runner” is one of the few tracks that lacks distorted and auto-tuned vocals. When Alex shrieks, “I have done a couple bad things,” it feels like he is screaming it, not a character.
On the fourth track “S.D.O.S,” Alex creates sprawling soundscapes, where single elements that would feel at home on previous works in isolation – simple drum patterns, melancholic chord progressions, and the occasional piano roll – come together to create something new. Alex utters, “Naked in my innocence/Tangled in my innocence” over and over for the first half of the song through a deep, gravely layer of auto-tune. Instead of the lyrics seeming like the forefront of the song, they become another element in the composition, with his voice cutting in from above. Around halfway through the track, a new voice appears, moaning the odd refrain, “God is my designer/Jesus is my lawyer.” These two sonically distinct voices reflect a feeling of unknowingness that has been so present throughout his discography.
Following this track is the stand-out “No Bitterness.” A song which, for the first half, lyrically and audibly sounds like it could fit into one of his previous works of electronic experimentation such as “Beach Music” or “House of Sugar.” However, by the latter half of the song, you check your phone to make sure you are still listening to an Alex G song. Simple guitar picking quickly gets transmuted into distorted loops as crunchy drums drive the track. Alex’s auto-tuned voice cuts through the noise, lamenting, “And if I cried/I really would like it.”
Many publications have referred to this track as Alex leaning into a more hyper pop sound, and aspects of the track could indeed be heard on hyper pop songs from leaders in the genre such as 100 Gecs and A.G. Cook. However, no other artist could work these sounds so seamlessly into a cohesive album. As soon as “No Bitterness” fades away, “Ain’t It Easy” slowly creeps into your ears. A song that initially sounds like a Duster-esque, slowcore song with simple drums and repetitive guitar loops quickly becomes haunted by Alex’s repeated whispers of the phrase “Ain’t it easy.” After a short bridge consisting of unintelligible autotuned noises, he cries out, “I should havе known/That you had lost control.” Just when you think you have the song figured out, he changes it at an impossibly perfect time.
It is this dichotomy of familiarity and uncertainty that makes the album so alluring. You think that each track could be placed on a previous album in G’s sprawling discography, yet just when you think you have it figured out, it erupts into something new.
Take the tenth track “Immunity,” a four-minute song that looks through the lens of a cocaine addict in rural Kansas. While lyrically similar to tracks such as “Hope” (“House of Sugar”) and “Change” (“Trick”), it is something completely different. His autotuned voice croons over pianos, guitars, and swelling synths. The narrative is never linear; instead, the narrator jumps from idea to idea. They start singing about an “Accident in Kansas” and how they will “Call you back soon,” before switching to the warm refrain, “Yeah, I’m in love with you/Yeah, I love you.” Instead of creating a linear concept, building from song to song to an ultimate conclusion, Alex opts to explore a feeling instead.
On the penultimate track “Miracles,” Alex returns to the folksy, country sound of “Rocket” as he sings some of his seemingly most personal lyrics — “You say one day that we should have a baby, well/Right now, baby, I’m struggling, we’ll see, yeah” — as his longtime partner, Molly Germer, plays a sorrowful violin in the back. Alex paints a picture of a man struggling, but instead of wallowing in it, he recognizes that “There’s no way up from apathy, yeah.”
On the final track, Alex G moves away from the hopelessness of previous records and closes the album on a hopeful note with “Forgive”. His voice rings clear as he cries out “Forgive yesterday/I choose today” over a low-key guitar. In these lyrics, Alex may be telling listeners to stop hanging onto the Alex G of the past: “We build/Castle upon castle upon castle”. The castles of the past, present, and eventual future exist on a level plane, and it is up to you to choose which one to listen to and explore.
Overall, With “God Save The Animals”, Alex continues on his hot streak that started with his first major label release. This album is an essential listen for any Alex G fan, and while it may be a jarring, genre-bending experience for those who are unfamiliar to his sound, it introduces them to an artist who has spent a decade making unique songs, with no end in sight.
