I was planning on taking my 15-year-old daughter to see Alex G. She’s the reason I got into him six years ago. She discovered him on YouTube, and over time she grew increasingly irritated by the hordes on TikTok who butchered his lyrics and turned his shows into screaming matches over mis heard refrains.
This was around the time the House of Sugar came out, and I will say: it’s an absolutely perfect record: zero fillers, zero skips. I equate Alex G with this generation’s Thom?Yorke. I’m an early Radiohead fan; I saw those first Bay Area shows as Aaron Axelson introduced them on the Sunday new-music section on Live 105. That rickety yet persuasive energy of the early Pablo Honey era matches the early Alex G stuff in my mind.
Alex G and company have a kind of Daniel Johnston mystique with an anarcho-punk edge running through warbly songs about his dog (whom he loved dearly), among other seemingly Christian or well-mannered undertones. He’s not as wry or sarcastic as Thom. He has a humanist undertone to every lyric, and a gratitude to some godly ghost. It’s hopeful on the surface, but the songs sometimes drag you down into cringey, heavy, impactful slamming synths and loud crashes, yet all in symphony with one another.
The band has a long-term relationship with one another, which shows profusely. From what I’ve seen since becoming a fan in 2019 and watching God Save the Animals evolve, they synergized and created something totally genre-less. It’s homage, yes, but only to the parts of records you love from 1994-2004: unintelligible guitar parts, heightened peaks of records, or small 2-second reminders of things you know but totally turned on their heads.
Fast forward to 2025: The Headlights album (his tenth studio) dropped just weeks before this tour. I bought front-row balcony tickets for my daughter and me, and I attended as a photographer/guest on the second night.
I don’t want to give everything away, but the Fox has touchy sound, but that first night, the money was well spent. I was astonished at the sound and the fact that I had an absolutely unobstructed view. The floor is a totally different experience (and the possibility of rabid fans wasn’t on our agenda). I was seated next to two 16-year-olds and several 20-somethings who were so kind and so excited that they were absolutely nail-biting to see if they could get the folks behind them to stand for the show. My daughter did not want me to interact with them, but I did briefly when I suggested they ask the folks behind them if they would stand, and they agreed. Glee was palatable. The very cool dad behind me was escorting five high-schoolers, and I could tell he was excited too. The crowd was mostly comprised of parent escorts, and sprinkled among them were the most nerdy audiophiles, mostly men between 40 and 50, sharing the same nail-biting excitement.
Back to Headlights: The album was just out, and it featured a more stripped-down sound, coming just as Alex sealed the deal with long-term love and adapted to fatherhood (privately). It’s a more mature, knowing voice. The samples indicated Zydeco and ’90s grunge, but all were put into the magical Alex G blender. He even busted out the squeeze box. The songs span Ben Folds, Red House Painters, Tom Petty, Vince Guaraldi, and even Dr. John. The work on this record seemed risky at first listen, and I worried the depth wouldn’t be there because the layering this time around was sparse and direct. It took on an emo flavor that was previously obscured with fuzz, vocoder, and clever effects. It struck me, as I took on the record in full completion multiple times over time, that he recorded his voice as a child singing to another child, and sometimes to himself. It sounds like a little family. A must listen.
The first night was very much about the record itself and some classics. I enjoyed night one a lot more, and I’m still deciding if that was because of the seating, or the fact that I had a sweet, awkward night with my daughter, or just that I was relaxed. I was moved to tears at points, and there were twinkly, dewy eyes around the scene both nights that were encouraging, because “aesthetic” is how many young people relate to things (e.g., Pinterest boards from Covid-era classroom and bedroom walls, and YouTube). I worried, but Alex puts aesthetics to work, and the feeling is all you need.
The Second Night, after I finished photographing the first 3 songs, I slipped into the area by the soundboard. I could hear the bar and the little gasps and conversations and laughs going on around me, and I fell into that world only slightly, with the back-up plan to head to the balcony again, but I went with it. My daughter worked her way up to the front to be with the die-hard,s and I soaked up the thrill from the early fans as he praised Oakland and teased with jokes about what early viral-hit songs he would play. He delivered a few (though I couldn’t always relay them). I’m so grateful to Alex because he’s conspiring with a fine line of style-biting and completely restacking musical matter into something timeless and transcendental.
