As Dr. Oz continues to trail behind John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania race for Pat Toomey’s open senate seat, even Republicans like Chris Christie can’t help but troll the TV doctor. While entertaining the crowd at a Garden State business convention, the former New Jersey governor took a noticeable jab at Oz’s residency woes that have plagued him ever since he narrowly won the GOP primary.
“I defend Dr. [Mehmet] Oz because he is a longtime New Jerseyan — problem is he’s running in Pennsylvania,” Christie joked to the crowd. While the quip might seem like some good-natured ribbing, it’s the last thing Oz needs right now as his outsider status continues to dampen enthusiasm for his campaign. (The whole crudités debacle didn’t help on that front either.)
However, Oz wasn’t the only one to get roasted by Christie. The former governor also took aim at Donald Trump. Although, Christie’s barbs were less playful banter and more a condemnation of Trump’s recent remarks that he can declassify documents with his mind.
“We have a former president of the United States who [went] on national television last night and said ‘I declassified the documents thinking about it,’” Christie said, mocking Trump’s defense against allegations that he illegally took classified documents from the White House. “Imagine all I could have accomplished if I only knew that I didn’t actually have to do it. I just had to think about it — this is a credible candidate for 2024.”
Christie, who was clearly in the bomb-throwing mood, took things a step further by calling out Republicans who continue to back Trump.
“There is a sector of our party, which cannot find themselves genetically unable to not defend Donald Trump,” Christie said. “This is a disaster. It’s bad for the country.”
Fall is here, and it’s bringing a whole lot more than just changing leaves and cooler temperatures. We’ve got so much going on this autumn that we had to put together a new episode of Culture Quick Bites to sum it all up, so grab your coziest sweater and your favorite Halloween candy (you know you’ve already bought some) and settle in.
Host Drew Dorsey is back to talk about all the big pop culture changes hitting us this fall, beginning with the return of Fall TV season and the premieres of everything from Andor on Disney+ to Interview with the Vampire on AMC. But TV isn’t having all the fun, as all the movies set to campaign for Oscars at the end of the year make the fall film festival circuit, delivering behind-the-scenes drama and some very exciting movie moments (A Timothee Chalamet cannibal romance? Yes, please). Sports fans also get some love as we dig into the start of the NBA season, complete with all those fresh ‘fits from the league’s biggest stars and a lot of lingering questions (will the Nets ever be anything more than a talented hot mess?)
Oh yes, and with the arrival of Fall also comes the return of spooky season, Spirit Halloween stores, and the trendiest Halloween costumes you can possibly think of (casual Top Gun: Maverick looks are easy to put together, fellas).
All that, plus music festivals shifting away from summer, Hispanic Heritage Month, and more in the video above. Happy Fall!
As an elder millennial, there is perhaps no starker reminder of the inexorable passage of time than watching the icons of my youth struggle with new technology — especially when that technology has been around for kind of a while. Still, it was pretty amusing for 2000s-era rap fans to watch Lil Wayne and Nelly, two of that decade’s biggest hitmakers getting endearingly confused as they tried to host an Instagram Live chat.
As the two rap titans catch up, Wayne notices the comments rising up from the bottom of the screen and wonders “that’s people saying stuff to me?” Nelly’s confirmation probably isn’t very enlightening, as he remarked, “Yeah, we both on here, they talking to us… they said ‘y’all good,’” he read. Wayne’s next question is a little more pressing: “Can we smoke on here?” “I am!” Nelly enthuses. “Why is everything sparkling on you?” Wayne chuckles, apparently unaware that the app allows users to add filter effects during chats. Nelly finally openly admits, “Ay man, I just told you, I don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing!” The conversation then turns to fantasy football, with Wayne lamenting the outlook for his team. It could be worse, though; Nelly’s last online snafu was a bit more risque, and Wayne’s always been a little out of touch.
Fans on Twitter were amused by the snippet, cackling over the fact that the two rappers have apparently reached the age when relatively common devices are as mystifying as arcane texts (Nelly is 47, Wayne is 39). As one user put it, “They grew up in a different generation so I can’t even clown.” And I thank you for that, user. Leave us to our Boost Mobile Sidekicks and Motorola two-way pagers, while you check out some of the responses below.
The hand movements when Lil Wayne said “No why is everything sparkling on you” had me laughing . Had to put some hand movements in there so Nelly can hear him louder https://t.co/que0ci3rav
Dev Hynes is back in the spotlight as Blood Orange. Four Songs, his self-explanatorily titled EP, released last week as his first solo Blood Orange project since 2019’s Angel’s Pulse. The elastic artist performed one of the four tracks, “Wish,” on Thursday night’s (September 22) The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Under moody red lighting, Blood Orange showcased his chops as a multi-instrumentalist and dreamy vocalist with support from his band and backup singers. “And you wish it all, wish it all went away,” he sang between turns on the keyboard and guitar.
Blood Orange’s intimate Fallon performance came two days after he wrapped his 15-date stint as an opener on Harry Styles‘ Love On Tour residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City from August 20 to September 21. Prior to that, Blood Orange staged a surprise headlining show at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn — his first such performance in three years — on August 12.
Four Songs was first teased through the release of single “Jesus Freak Lighter” on September 8. The other two tracks on the project are “Something You Know” and “Relax & Run” featuring Erika de Casier & Eva Tolkin. The EP marks Blood Orange’s first release since signing to RCA.
The line to get into Arctic Monkeys at Kings Theater was wrapped around the block with music lovers becoming beggars in the street asking for extra tickets. The Ticketmaster sale was an impossible battle — not unlike The Hunger Games — that left many fans in despair. I was told the band was going on at 8:30 P.M., and my friend and I were worried about missing their entrance because that time was a half hour away and we were at the back of the line. It moved fast, though, and we were cushioned in between normie-looking men we made fun of — “Arctic Monkeys are for girls and gays only,” we agreed — as they mumbled to each other about how they hoped they would play early stuff. We watched everyone take a photograph of the marquee because it would be their only way of proving they were at the show. She said she heard that people started lining up at 8 A.M. By the time we got in, we finessed our way into getting pit wristbands and put our phones in sockets that automatically locked — a rule that was placed because the performance was being filmed.
After sprinting to the bathroom and getting drinks, we hurried to the pit. We marveled at the weird demographic of the crowd. There were not as many young women as I expected; there were a lot of older people, especially men with bald heads and button-up shirts. There was a man dressed up as Elvis. There were some couples. It was a mixed bag. I became aware of the internet bubble I was always in; I had pictured a swarm of girls in Doc Martens and fishnets, a Tumblr-come-to-life situation. But they were all hidden behind dudes in khakis vaping. I assumed they were closer to the barricade, the ones lining up in the morning.
I had scoured ticket sites for weeks after the Ticketmaster fail. I’d never seen Arctic Monkeys before, despite AM being one of the first vinyl records I purchased and “505” taking the place as one of my favorite songs ever. In those days, I was one of millions of girls posting pictures of Alex Turner on my finsta with a caption about wanting him to run me over with a car. But I had been more devoted to their counterpart The Neighbourhood, who I caught at Terminal 5 in early high school where the crowd was all girls pushing each other violently. When this surprise Arctic Monkeys show was announced, I decided my attendance was essential, especially at a venue that possessed the aura of a chapel. Up until the day of, a pit ticket cost $400. I texted my friend: you don’t understand i need to be in fishnets and docs screaming along to arabella and looking alex turner in the eyes. I told my friends that I wanted to go feral, to experience physical and emotional catharsis to the songs that soundtracked my youth.
My friend and I sat on the floor against the barricade as we waited. Time failed to exist without our phones. I knew it was well past 8:30. We talked about men and shows and our years so far. We theorized about the Elvis impersonator. “No one’s going to believe that we snuck into the pit,” she said to me. Our lack of phones added an existential tilt to everything we did — would we be able to prove anything? Was our experience real if other people didn’t know about it? She said she heard that the reason we had to put our phones away was that they were gonna perform their forthcoming album The Car in its entirety. I said I doubted that.
The environment had the texture of a play rather than a concert. I ran to the bathroom once more and as I was coming back the lights dimmed and the crowd cheered. I grabbed my friend’s hand and we wove our way into the crowd. Fog diffused into the air and a disco ball descended over the stage. The members walked onto the stage and Alex Turner sat himself at a piano to perform “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball,” the enchanting lead single from The Car. It was a tender beginning. His voice dominated the theater with its breathtakingly clean and sultry cadence. “I can’t believe he actually sounds like that,” I yelled.
The disco ball raised back up and disappeared as “One Point Perspective” began next, a jaunty Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino cut that prompted Turner to saunter around the stage theatrically, taking on his designated role as the irresistible heartthrob as he looked into crowd members’ eyes and put them in a trance. As he sang, “Bear with me, man / I lost my train of thought,” he stood at the microphone and took on a confused look, a charming moment I’d watched him in before through a TikTok that made me screech.
There has been lots of talk about the revival of the 2014 Tumblr era. The conversation began at the start of the pandemic, and journalists concluded that those who were reblogging Matty Healy gifs in 2014 were just about entering their 20s and experiencing nostalgia for their early teenage days. That was intensified by the way quarantine forced many people back into living at their parents’ house and therefore spending nights in their childhood bedroom. Along with all of that, there was TikTok — a platform that thrives through niche communities. People on that app started to reminisce, wearing American Apparel tennis skirts and spinning a Catfish & The Bottlemen record.
So when the band launched into “Snap Out Of It” next, I interpreted the AM shift as a sign to get into the core of the crowd to dance. I grabbed my friend’s hand and tried to make my way through but was immediately stopped by people in front of me who were as cemented as a wall. I shrugged it off and jumped up and down, earning some glances from those standing still next to me, sometimes whipping my hair and screaming the words at the top of my lungs. The smell of weed slowly started to overtake the smell of vape smoke. A ton of AM essentials were fit into the set, like “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High,” “Do I Wanna Know,” “Arabella” — the kind of songs reverberating with a restlessness yet are not exactly energetic. The rhythms are too tame and the feeling is contained to find an easy way to move your body along. Mostly, fans threw their hands in the air while singing along. My friend and I noticed one or two phones that were snuck in and lifted up during a classic chorus. We danced more fervently when they played Humbug hits, like the visceral “Crying Lightning” and “Potion Approaching,” which leaned into their punk edge. I was confused at the lack of movement around us, thinking about the time a friend had once told me that she left an Arctic Monkeys show in bruises.
It wasn’t until songs from their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not that two guys crashed into me and my friend, hopping around carelessly. Finally, we mirrored them without worrying about judgment. A girl with a big smile who looked like a fellow Tumblr veteran came up to me and said something. I yelled: “What?” And then I heard her: “Do you want to start a mosh?” I yelled: “Yes!” In the blink of an eye, she pushed me and my friend and the guys and suddenly there was a little pit of us sweatily body-slamming each other and laughing with our hands in the air. I saw a person crowdsurfing and shrieked. For the rest of the show, our area in the crowd was free-spirited and ardent. Everyone made eye contact with each other as they yelled along, serenading each other. A guy lifted me up to crowdsurf and I headbanged my way toward the stage so hard that my glasses flew off my face. I got down and tried looking for them but they catapulted into another Whatever People Say I Am anthem and I surrendered myself to the mess of jumping bodies, losing my mind with them. They walked off the stage after the explosive and extremely sexy “R U Mine?” during which I shamelessly played air-guitar.
Of course I knew an encore was coming because they hadn’t played “505.” When they came back out after some chants, they took things slow by debuting “Mr Schwartz” from The Car and playing the cinematic Humbug ballad “Cornerstone.” Friends slow-danced and the disco ball came back down to cast white circles on everything. I stood swaying, hoping my friend would find me because everything in my vision was blurry. I moved to the back of the crowd and then finally the first note of “505” kicked in — a note that triggers a reflex in me, like in a “Welcome To The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance kind of way — and I went back into the audience. I wanted to devise a plan to crowdsurf as soon as the beat dropped; it would be spiritual, a kind of soaring that would lead to out-of-body transcendence. But the guys around me were unreliable, too preoccupied with jumping, and I acquiesced and it was liberating and invigorating nonetheless.
The lights came on and the floor was covered in crushed beer cans, striking me as sacrilegious under the artful ceilings. A guy came up to me to engage in a fist-bump. I left him hanging, telling him I lost my glasses and my friend. He asked what her name was and riled his friends together. In a minute, they held out my golden frames to me, devoid of lenses. I laughed and thanked them. Someone else came up to me with one lens, grey and scarred. My friend came running up to me and said she had been dancing with those guys who crashed into us before. The steps were blocked by cesspools of people. I said I was afraid of what the filming of the show would look like. I never want to watch it; I would just see how weird I looked during my spurts of wild passion, and I don’t need to see that. When we finally reached the exit, our cases with our phones were unlocked and we took a disheveled post-concert selfie — one last piece of evidence.
Swift’s 2020 album Folklore was the first time she used the word “f*ck” and it was so significant that she was asked how it felt to do so in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Taylor’s response? “F*cking fantastic.”
She added more context to the experience, saying, “Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, ‘You haven’t done this before, so you can’t ever do this.’ ‘Well, you’ve never had an explicit sticker, so you can’t ever have an explicit sticker.’ But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it.”
In that same year, she released Evermore, which a Reddit user showed was statistically her most profane album to date in an elaborate chart. Given all she has endured over the years, namely her feud with Scooter Braun, it makes sense that Swift wants to let loose and express herself without a filter. Time will tell if Midnights takes the throne amongst her explicit musical canon.
Midnights is out 10/21 via Republic. Pre-order it here.
Beyoncé fans are eagerly awaiting to experience the songs from Renaissance live, especially considering it’s packed with danceable house anthems that would definitely make a crowd move fervently. While the singer hasn’t officially announced a tour, there are promising rumors circulating online, giving fans reasons to get excited.
Page Six has recently reported that Renaissance will finally be taken on the road soon, according to what multiple inside sources told the magazine. One revealed that Beyoncé is booking stadiums around the world for next summer, and another divulged that an announcement will be made in the coming weeks. Nothing is confirmed but there is hope on the horizon at least.
In the meantime, Beyoncé has kept busy in wholesome ways. She recently had a personal gift shipped to Abbott Elementary‘s Sheryl Lee Ralph, in celebration of her recent Emmy win for Best Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series. Ralph became just the second Black woman to win in that category at last week’s Emmy Awards. Along with the bouquet of yellow and white flowers, Beyoncé wrote Ralph a special note, referencing the role of Deena Jones in Dreamgirls that they both played (Ralph in the 1981 Broadway debut, Beyoncé in the 2006 movie).
Even though YG’s latest single from his upcoming album I Got Issues is called “Maniac,” the accompanying video isn’t all that crazy at first glance. Then you see a guy in the back Blood walking in a “Thriller” jacket and you realize, “Oh yeah. Someone must have lost their mind.”
I kid, but YG’s new song and video are pretty typical of the material he’s put out from the new album so far. The Compton rapper subtly details the stressors that have been making his life “krazy” since even before he got famous (see what I did there?), and brashly reveals the effect getting rich and famous has had on them. He also shows off his increasingly polished wordplay skills, a facet of his artistry that has been overlooked and underrated for the past few years. Ever since he started writing his raps down, he’s had a plethora of clever turns of phrases like this one: “I put bands on heads, give you a headband, n****.”
The rollout for I Got Issues hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as YG wanted though. After dropping well-received singles like “Run” and “Toxic,” YG expressed his disappointment in Def Jam after the tracklist for the album — which features surprise features like Nas — was released prematurely.
Despite that snafu, though, anticipation for the album seems about where it should be and it looks like he’s on track for another well-performing project when I Got Issues drops on September 30. Pre-save it here.
After receiving four Latin Grammy nominations earlier this week, Sebastián Yatra has teamed up with Venezuelan singer-songwriter Lasso. The two Latin heartthrobs rock out in the music video for “Ojos Marrones” that was released on Wednesday (September 21).
Lasso is having a breakthrough year with “Ojos Marrones.” He first released the folk-pop love song back in June. Lasso revealed that the one of his references for track’s nostalgic sound was “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. It’s become his biggest hit to date with over 103 million streams on Spotify.
Last month, Yatra jumped on a remix version of “Ojos Marrones.” Lasso performed it live for the first time with the Colombian pop star during the LA stop of his Dharma Tour. Now the video for their duet is out and they bring the song’s sexy swagger to life. Lasso strums away on the electric guitar while Yatra sings along with his button-up shirt bearing his chest. Both artists are serenading the brown-eyed woman of their dreams.
Lasso is currently on his Algodón World Tour that visits the US in November and December. Yatra’s Dharma Tour runs through the US until early November. At the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards, Yatra’s four nominations include Album Of The Year for Dharma and Song Of The Year for “Tacones Rojos.”
Originality and popularity aren’t necessarily the determinants of long-term influence in indie rock. Rather, an artist has to achieve a delicate balance between “I can do that” and “how did they do that?” During the first half of the 2010s, Alex Giannascoli came out murmuring from a Philly basement/bedroom, creating an organic buzz on the strength of music that didn’t appear to require much technical skill; self-recorded and self-released while in his teens, albums like Race, Winner and Trick were defined by briskly strummed and muffled open-tuned guitars, rickety drums, charmingly simple rhymes, and the hiss of a microphone plugged straight into a computer. Though some of these albums have been professionally mixed and mastered in the time since, the “graphic design is my passion” cover art has remained.
The music itself was heavily influenced by Kill Rock Stars-era Elliott Smith, whereas Alex G’s taste for warped vocals can be traced to The Knife’s Silent Shout — a groundbreaking record in 2006 that you could emulate after a few minutes of YouTube tutorials by 2010. And as someone with vivid memories of going to multiple record stores just to find a copy of Illinois in 2005, the rise of Bandcamp, Tunecore, and other distribution platforms is still astounding to me — I could technically record a bunch of songs on my phone and they’d be just as easy for my parents to buy as a Bad Bunny album.
Indeed, there have probably been hundreds of “Alex G-type beats” uploaded to Bandcamp in the past month alone. And you won’t hear any of them because, as easy as it to emulate the superficial aspects of the man’s music, there’s been an uncanny quality that has proven impossible to replicate — even the most seemingly straightforward and Genius-analyzed Alex G lyrics rarely match what Alex G says they’re about, if he says anything about them at all. The song structures and melodies take counterintuitive turns that end up making all the sense in the world. If there’s a throughline from 2010’s Race to Alex G’s superlative new album God Save The Animals, it’s that he’s always a half-step ahead of his listeners — enough to beckon them forward without losing them completely.
Alex G’s place in the broader context of indie rock feels just as slippery as his music. Many of the dominant threads of the past decade run through his discography — the rise of Philadelphia as the epicenter of guitar-based indie rock, the shift of tastemaking from prestige publications to non-critical sources on social media, Orchid Tapes, Run For Cover, dad hats, Frank Ocean, Bandcamp. But unlike most of the artists who’ve followed a similar path towards indie’s A-list — Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Car Seat Headrest, et al. — Alex G has done so without making Alex Giannascoli a load-bearing part of his appeal. His lyrics are quotable, if they’re audible, but rarely the kind that get meme’d on Twitter. I’ve heard from multiple sources that he’s a very hard guy to get a pull quote out of. Surely, “guys who are super into Alex G” did not get wiped out during the pandemic, but he’s never been the type to generate much content between album cycles. His closest brush with viral controversy involved getting confused for Beto O’Rourke.
Leading up to Beach Music, his 2015 debut on Domino, the word on Alex G was “prolific” — that between his proper albums, one-offs, and collaborations, it could be difficult to find a place to start without feeling overwhelmed. In the time since, Alex G’s output has hewed to a more deliberate, traditional pace and yet the numbers still feel daunting — 10 albums over the span of 12 years. To an extent, starting in reverse chronological order might be the best move for the novice strapped for time. But then again, the man is 29 years old — ask someone who has come of age alongside Alex G and the answer might be completely different. Heck, ask me in a few weeks and the answer might be different.
10. Winner, 2011
Winner has taken on an orphaned reputation, disappearing from all non-Bandcamp streaming services and stuck between the historical import of Alex G’s debut and the 2012 double-shot of Rules and Tricks that stoked a newfound national reputation. Heck, even the Rate Your Music and Bandcamp reviews are relatively muted; it’s kinda wild to consider the possibility of those people hearing Winner in 2011 and thinking that Alex G’s best days were possibly behind him. And while there are a couple of gems here, something’s gotta hold down this spot and I swear I’m not trying to be cute just because of the title.
9. Race, 2010
If you’re unfamiliar with Indiecast — new episodes airing every Friday, by the way — one of our favorite pet theories is that the last year of any decade is the “-10.” 1991, 2001, 2011 — that’s when the real ’90s or aughts or 2010s began. And so looking back on Race, a 2010 bedroom-to-Bandcamp archetype from its album cover to its GarageBand production values, it’s fun to imagine it sharing the same airspace as Halcyon Digest, The Monitor, Teen Dream, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and such, monumental capstones of the decade prior (not to mention even the buzzier, more R&B/chillwave-indebted likes of Twin Shadow or How To Dress Well). What I hear now is a lot of charm, which is to say, a 17-year-old with obvious talents still showing his tracework — there’s obvious nods to Elliott Smith and Conor Oberst, the occasional burst of lo-fi ingenuity and puerile lyricism. To reiterate, Alex G was 17 when it came out and you should compare it to any songs you wrote at that age.
8. Rules, 2012
In some crucial ways, Rules is the first exemplar of what an “Alex G album” would be going forward — curveball opening track, artwork courtesy of his sister Rachel, plus the bonus track “Sandy” that would end up becoming far more consequential than anyone could’ve ever expected in 2012. But it also stands apart amidst Alex G’s pre-Domino output as the most rawk thing he’s ever done, as “Candy,” “Message” and “Master” truly sound like the work of a garage band recording on GarageBand. It’s not his best look — the piano-laced “Mis” and hushed “Come Back” were more indicative of what would come later that year on Trick, an album whose shadow looms over Rules to this day.
7. We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (Original Soundtrack), 2022
Even if he wasn’t responsible for the original score, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair probably doesn’t exist without Alex Giannascoli. Jane Schoenbrun reportedly went heavy on the Alex G catalog while writing the script, part body horror, part mumblecore, part suburban picaresque, all very online. While the mundane ASMR-like sounds of the online experience carry much of the sonic weight of the film — tapping keyboards camera timers and such — Alex G was tasked with serving as a liaison between the physical and digital realms of We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, as well as between the eerie beauty and gory repulsion of its visuals. Given carte blanche by a superfan, he gets indulgent here, a handful of more traditional vocal performances overshadowed by experiments in frosted synth instrumentals and “Casey’s Walk,” seven minutes of haunted house ambient. If not an essential addition to the Alex G discography, it’s an important one nonetheless, proof of a distinct, highly in-demand sonic signature that requires going straight to the source.
6. Trick, 2012
Trick is Alex G’s most successful album on Spotify and it’s not particularly close. This is largely thanks to “Mary,” “Sarah” and “Advice,” all of which have at least 32 million streams apiece — about three times more than their closest competitor (House Of Sugar’s “Gretel”) and more than Beach Music and DSU in their entirety. I can’t really ascribe this to Trick having some kind of rarefied status in the Alex G universe, nor the commercial boost provided by its 2015 reissue. But my theory is that Trick is the Alex G album most suited to spawn fluky Spotify hits (though it doesn’t contain his “Harness Your Hopes,” that would be 2011 single “Treehouse,” a duet with Emily Yacina). Up to that point, Alex G songs were loose, off-the-cuff things but the albums themselves were fairly tight; Trick was downright indulgent at 37 minutes, 16 songs and some of which were clearly larks or, dare I say, filler. And then there’s “Mary” and “Sarah,” the ones probably best suited to playlist-making for people who fail to dig deeper than their titles — “Mary” is perhaps the creepiest women-as-weed metaphor ever put to tape, while “Sarah” is the kind of love song deeply emotional and unhappy young people share with each other as a kind of aspirational model. But then again, it’s usually the hits that distinguish the superfan from the casual listener, i.e., the kind that had yet to learn not to take everything Alex G says at face value.
5. Rocket, 2017
Like most prominent indie rock artists from Philly, Alex G started leaning more towards country music in 2017. With their twangy cowboy chords and high lonesome harmonies, “Bobby,” “Proud” and “Powerful Man” reframe Alex G’s ’90s reference as that of a long-lost descendant of the No Depression movement rather than a Kill Rock Stars signing. But if Rocket indeed is his “country” album, what to make then of the Califone-esque, pots-and-pans percussion of “Horse” and “Poison Root,” or the psychedelic loops of “Alina” or… “Brick,” which sounds like a Show Me The Body track that accidentally got smuggled into Rocket as a plant pressing error. Perhaps the better word for Rocket is that it’s Alex G’s “roots” album, so long as one can accept that alt-country, hardcore, and cocktail jazz are equally foundational forms of American music.
4. DSU, 2014
If we’re allowing the Elliott Smith comparison, this is his Either/Or — the last record he’d make as a strictly cult artist and also the one I feel most self-conscious about ranking because I believe his best work came with a bigger budget (I don’t know what the “Say Yes” is in this scenario, Alex G doesn’t really write those kind of songs). I won’t begrudge anyone’s personal attachment to DSU and it’s certainly a significant step up in an already impressive catalog. Critics playing catch up understandably used 2014-appropriate weirdo-pop touchstones (Ariel Pink! Mac DeMarco! Jackson Scott!), but Alex G’s forays into off-kilter funk (“Promise”), Scotchgard-huffing slowcore (“Icehead”) and shaggy guitar heroism (“Serpent is Lord”) felt borne of confidence and curiosity, like someone who was only beginning to realize the extent of their talents and their ambitions. From DSU forward, it was impossible to engage with indie rock and not hear artists trying to sound like Alex G.
3. House Of Sugar, 2019
When I first conceived this list, I felt pretty sure House Of Sugar was going to be No. 1 — it had the best singles of any Alex G album that actually had pre-release singles, I’ve been conditioned over the past 25 or so years to believe any indie artist’s dive into electronic music is inherently greater than their guitar-based work and it also got the best overall reviews. Upon revisitation, a lot of that holds true — both “Southern Sky” and “Gretel” are No. 1 seeds if there’s ever an Alex G tourney pool-style bracket, while “In My Arms” and “Cow” accounted for his strongest Side B run to date. And yet, while the largely abstract and discordant electronic midsection felt beguiling and progressive throughout 2019, nowadays I find myself impatiently waiting through “Near” and “Project 2”; interesting stuff and certainly unexpected from someone whose transitory tracks in the past had still leaned more towards analog, strings-and-wood instruments. But while I appreciate the artistic risk, House Of Sugar spends a bit too much time working against Alex G’s strengths, at least when the “singer-songwriter” and “electronic” modes are divided so blatantly. Of course, this is only something I realized three years later as he reconciled those sides on God Save The Animals.
2. Beach Music, 2015
It being 2015 and not 1995, I don’t recall many people having hang-ups about Alex G becoming labelmates with Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. Getting signed to Domino felt like a validation for Bandcampers, proof of a path forward for the countless, solo bedroom artists taking advantage of the unprecedented accessibility of home recording technology and the grim realities of trying to start out as a band in the mid-2010s (indeed, Car Seat Headrest and Mitski would soon find themselves stepping up to Matador and Dead Oceans in the next year). It’s not like a beefier recording and/or promotion budget made Beach Music any more slick or pandering; in fact, Alex G’s de facto “major label” debut took the experimentation of DSU towards even stranger places, developing a taste for corrupting pre-rock pop music and all but eliminating the fuzzier indie stylings of Rules and Trick. But am I wrong in remembering Beach Music being viewed as… kind of a disappointment? Or at least, the source of befuddlement to people just catching wind of Alex G and wondering, this is the new Elliott Smith? Certainly, Beach Music makes for a curious starting point, and lead single “Bug” ended with some of his most abrasive pitch-shifted vocals. The most popular song, “Brite Boy,” is a playground duet that could pass for a chipper Ween, but the vibe is otherwise generally somber and subdued, the guitar heroics of “Snot” and “Kicker” bashful as they are beautiful. But whereas the more acclaimed Domino albums that would come later largely adhered to a Microcastle-style track sequencing — singles at the front, experimental middle, reconvene for a more accessible but somewhat more subdued Side B — Beach Music strikes me now as the most coherent Alex G album, darting every which way on a track-by-track basis but maintaining a consistent, bittersweet mood that never fails when any of the four seasons start to change.
1. God Save The Animals, 2022
Had it not been made clear already, this, like all Best Albums lists, is the result of inherently subjective dark arts. Had someone else made this pitch to Uproxx HQ before myself, you would’ve read about how Trick is actually Alex G’s greatest work or why House Of Sugar can’t possibly top Rocket because the latter came out when the author was a freshman in college. Or vice versa. While there have been plenty of superlatives granted to God Save The Animals thus far — his most refined work, his most pop, surely more to come — I feel comfortable giving into recency bias here because it undeniably feels like a culmination of everything he’s done up to this point. Folky Alex G, abstract Alex G, slowcore Alex G, rawk Alex G, it’s all here, but God Save The Animals manages to circle back to his origins placing the vocals higher than they’d ever been since Race or Rules. And this time around, it seems like Alex G wants you to pay attention to what he has to say, largely forgoing his more oblique lyrical style to express his thoughts about art, about God, about his career, about drugs, about eternity — or at least, what seems like Alex G doing a straight-up “singer-songwriter” bit. By this point, we should know better — God Save The Animals holds true not to convention but to Alex G.
God Save The Animals is out now via Domino. Get it here.
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