by Jackson Phinney
The 1984 film Amadeus is not really about Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, or at least not directly. It is actually
about one Antonio Salieri, who worked in the late 18th century
as the court composer for Emperor Joseph II of Austria.
In the film, Salieri and Mozart wind up living, working,
and writing music in the city of Vienna at the same time
– Salieri is industrious, well respected, and reserved,
whereas Mozart is, by contrast, asinine, flippant, and chronically
immature. Salieri slaves away at his keyboard night after
night, beseeching God to visit him with musical inspiration;
Mozart pens his immortal melodies quite literally between
fart jokes.
The central tension of the film lies within the fact that
Salieri is actually a very good musician. His own abilities
allow him to recognize that Mozart is a genius, but, crucially,
are not significant enough to enable him to write genius
music himself. He is cursed with a mere morsel of Mozart’s
ability, made to look on as Mozart conjures, without the
slightest bit of effort, the most brilliant collection of
musical works ever known to man.
My relationship with the 21-year-old Philadelphia songwriter
Alex G is a little like that: He is the Mozart to my Salieri.
I love music, and I am good at making it – just good
enough to realize that Alex G, a prolific and little known
bedroom-recording artist the same age as myself, is possessed
of a talent so immense that I am almost
comfortable labeling him a prodigy. While his music may
sound like Built to Spill or Big Star, in my eyes he has
more in common with Franz Liszt or Beethoven.
I realize that I sound insane making such comparisons, but
to describe Alex otherwise would be to sell him short. From
my vantage point, as a hardworking artist and a passionate
fan of music, Alex appears to belong to a class of musicians
so select as to encompass practically no one else working
in indie today. His approach is so seemingly effortless,
his command of melody so intrinsic, his style so distinctive
that I am left grabbing hopelessly at hyperbolic straws
even attempting to describe his work, much less create something
equal to it.
His most recent run of records (2012’s watershed
Trick and Rules, 2013’s brilliant split 7”
with Los Angeles songstress R.L. Kelly, and his newest full-length,
DSU) are bafflingly good. Trick and DSU
in particular are so jaw-droppingly excellent that, from
my perspective as a songwriter, Alex appears to be playing
by fundamentally different rules than the rest of us. And
indeed, perhaps he is.
Alex himself, as was mentioned above, is a 21-year-old kid
from Philadelphia - his full name is Alex Giannascoli. He
is a rising senior at Temple University, and studies English.
Until recently he sported a head of straight, greasy, shoulder-length
black hair, which was perhaps the most notable aspect of
his appearance. He dresses simply, speaks infrequently,
and seems totally unconcerned with appearing “cool”
or “hip” in any capacity. If the adolescent
Severus Snape had bagged groceries or worked a summer gig
at Blockbuster, he might have made a similar impression
upon the general populous, which is to say, an unremarkable
one.
I first saw Alex in person at one of his shows in Brooklyn
a month ago; in the time leading up to his set he meandered
around the venue in a pair of jeans and a baggy red hoodie
which most style-conscious New Yorkers would not be caught
dead in. He moved from one back corner of the room to another,
slouched, nursing a PBR, speaking occasionally to friends
with a glazed look in his eyes and a semi-stoned grin on
his long, boyish face. When I got up the courage to speak
to him (at this point I had been obsessing over his music
for half a year, almost completely eschewing all other stimulation
in favor of his 2012 album Trick during that time) I might
as well have been ordering McDonalds at a drive-thru window.
Every remark I made and every superlative I offered seemed
to register only faintly, as if the Alex I was currently
speaking with was merely taking a message for the Alex I
had come to know through the music.
“Ah, yeah, thanks, man, cool, shit.” The same
cryptic smile, the same warm and yet totally unreadable
expression, and the same distinctive feeling that I was
trying to talk to someone at the other end of a long tunnel,
in a blizzard, with the lights off, in a language that they
did not fully understand.
I mention all of this to underscore the jarring gap between
Alex Giannascoli, the young and slightly catatonic college
student, and Alex G, the best and most fascinating songwriter
currently active. When Alex finally took the stage that
night in Brooklyn, he (and his excellent band, who play
with him live but not on his recordings) casually dished
out perhaps the most stunning half-hour of live music that
I have ever been party to. Watching Alex play was like finding
a fist-sized diamond inside of a bag of Cheetoes, as song
after laughably perfect song burst out of this kid who seemed
absolutely, almost perversely, ordinary.
However, anyone who has ever visited Alex’s Bandcamp
page knows that this impression of contrast extends well
beyond his live set, and is indeed a crucial part of his
appeal. The site that hosts his music is, like the man himself,
almost aggressively uncool: it sports a featureless black
banner and a plain navy background, upon which are displayed
12 of the worst album covers I have ever seen. Indeed it
was at this point that, after Alex’s music was first
recommended to me over a year ago, I made a swift about-face
without listening to so much as a single song: the site,
like Alex, seemed categorically incapable of containing
the brilliant music which it was purported to. Indeed, even
now the Bandcamp is shocking to me – the gorgeous,
electronically tinged single “Lucy” is represented
by a blurry picture of a dog and a slipper, with the title
slapped across the top in the unmistakable hand of Microsoft
Paint. The 2011 single “Good,” which not only
sounds like Elliott Smith but is at least as good as any
of that songwriter’s best material, features a confounding
photo of Alex in a backwards raccoon-skin cap and cheap
sunglasses, with the tail acting as a sort of snout. The
list of strange grievances goes on (the cover of “Joy”
even features a typo), and one would be forgiven for not
wanting to listen to any of these albums. But the more I
fall in love with Alex’s music, the more I realize
that these oddities are part of the basic makeup of his
genius.
Alex does not need to look cool, or have a sleek website
with tasteful album art, because the better part of his
output since 2011 represents the strongest debut showing
by a songwriter since the turn of the millennium. Not all
of it is at this level, as Alex is extremely prolific and
his (relatively speaking) “less mature” work
(which is to say, the stuff he made when he was 17 and 18,
and perhaps even younger) suffers naturally from a lack
of focus. However, his best material (some of which was
indeed created at these young ages) is so good as to be
almost unbelievable. In my opinion, in Alex G we are witnessing
the birth of a first-rate talent, the likes of which the
traditional modes of “rock” and “indie”
songwriting have been missing for a very, very long time.
I am loath to say these things because the current hype-mongering
which is engaged in to try and drum up interest for artists
in our oversaturated musical climate is effectively killing
indie (or already has.) But in this particular case, I ultimately
don’t care. Alex is, unlike so many others, the real
McCoy: The genuine article. Like Brian Wilson, early Bob
Dylan, and ‘70s Neil Young, it feels inadequate to
describe Alex as an “artist,” in the traditional,
pedestrian sense of the term; to me, he feels closer to
a visionary. As with Dylan and Young, Alex’s best
work is so varied and so excellent that it becomes effectively
impossible to imagine a single person being responsible
for it all. From an outside perspective, it seems to me
that Alex is acting as a sort of conduit for exceptional
musical ideas; it is as if he has one foot in our world
and the other in a realm utterly inaccessible to must of
us. To further this impression, a recent interview with
Alex noted that he “has trouble articulating certain
details of his creative process, often second-guessing his
responses and fumbling to answer questions… When [asked]
about influences, he goes blank.” To me, this is unsurprising
– Alex’s music is so good that I cannot imagine
him consciously endeavoring to create it. It seems to come
from beyond him, almost as if he were possessed by something
larger than himself; the music seems to pass through him,
rather than originating within him. It is fascinating and,
as a musician, profoundly humbling.
I realize that, for those unfamiliar with his work, I have
done little more here than place Alex on an enormously high
pedestal. While I have felt this way about Alex for many
months I have been, up until now, reluctant to do precisely
that. This week, however, changes things; as of Tuesday,
Alex’s new full-length ‘DSU’ has been
made available for streaming and pay-what-you-will download.
It is an absolutely exceptional record in its own right,
and for me personally its readily-accessible existence is
a cause for some relief. This is because, prior to ‘DSU,’
one of the biggest issues with Alex was that, for some unfathomable
reason, he was failing (or choosing not) to release large
quantities of his best music. While Alex’s official
Bandcamp features some dozen releases, his best collection
of songs is, inexplicably, not amongst them; for this reason
I believe that many tentative converts to his music end
up missing out on what is undoubtedly his best stuff. ‘DSU’
secures another excellent 13 songs safely within his Bandcamp
and will prove an excellent starter-kit for new fans –
but for those who desire more, it will require a little
internet spelunking to unearth the set of tracks which,
combined, stand as the best “album” of the last
few years.
When I discovered Alex’s music, I began on his site
with ‘Trick,’ which had been (rightfully) recommended
to me. That record exploded inside of my music-centric life
like a Peep in a microwave - I could not believe how good
it was. From the opening guitar murmurs of “Memory”
I was spellbound by the strange mix of warped melodicism
and cryptic, even nonsensical poetry. The opening lines
continue to haunt me frequently throughout my day:z
“I was waitin’ for a baggie / A powder
bunny / I have a buddy I grew up with / He hooked it up
for me.”
While I doubt if anyone besides Alex (and perhaps not even
him) has any idea what this means, it does serve to highlight
one of the most compelling qualities about his music, which
I think frequently drives fans to obsession and is probably
responsible for his current status as a “cult”
artist. This is that there is something intrinsically odd
about Alex and his music, and the more one familiarizes
oneself with it all, the more it seems as if the entire
package was being beamed in from some slightly different
world. The demented, childish album covers (‘Trick’
features a German shepherd running down the center aisle
of a church, with the title of the record in a ghastly teal
font above the altar), the relentless output of music, which
itself feels strangely anonymous, and above all the lyrics,
which often traffic in commonplace themes but in such a
way that everything feels somehow off (“My favorite
animal / Is the whale / I like his big fat tail. / I wanna
cut off a piece of him / And I’ll share / You get
a piece of the whale.”) Even the song titles fit this
bill: almost always comprised of a single word, the tracklists
of his albums wind up reading like word-association shopping
lists compiled by aliens attempting to successfully assimilate
into human society (1. Memory, 2. Forever, 3. Animals, 4.
String, 5. Advice, 6. People…) All of this, combined
with Alex’s person and even the basic information
available about him (his artist photo on Bandcamp is a rough
sketch of a bony, galloping horse, and the only personal
information included is the curious email address “monsterhead7@aol.com”)
suffices to surround the man and his work in an aura which
is equal parts unknowable auteur and peculiar, enchanted
wunderkind.
This impression only deepens the further one progresses
into Alex’s world, and the more time one spends there,
the more irresistible the whole thing becomes. On stage,
for instance, Alex stands, legs apart, swaying robotically
side to side like an absentminded cuckoo clock, with his
tongue often dangling from his mouth and a bemused, vacant
expression plastered on his face. It is, from personal experience,
both extremely weird and absolutely captivating. There is
a drive to understand this person, who offers so much of
himself in his music and yet remains always, inexplicably,
tantalizingly, unknowable.
While ‘Trick’ served as my gateway into this
strange fascination, I was soon in need of more –
as much as I could possibly get my hands on, to be exact.
‘Trick’ is a watershed, a tour de force of Alex’s
preoccupations (childhood, aging, the difficulties arrived
at when the two begin to coincide). It also plays as a showcase
of his influences, unconscious or otherwise (Built to Spill
and Big Star seem the obvious touchstones, with spidery
guitar riffs and totally effortless melodicism constantly
in the foreground, but the specter of Elliott Smith is also
often present, particularly on tracks like (the heartbreaking,
impossibly poignant) “Change”). Given ‘Trick’’s
scope, it is the perfect place to begin – but immediately
beyond its 13 tracks, things become slightly more difficult.
Alex’s other releases are not as consistent, although
each features at least a handful of songs so excellent that
one cannot risk skipping over the record entirely. ‘Rules’
is, after ‘Trick’, the one with the highest
batting average – indeed, the more time I spend with
it the more I realize that it is essentially a masterpiece
in its own right, more subdued and less sprawling than ‘Trick’,
but also more personal and a bit less eclectic. ‘Easy’,
a collection of seven songs from 2011 (“didn’t
really have time to finish” reads the laconic description
beneath it on Bandcamp (the most information offered about
any release)) features a few through-the-stratosphere incredible
moments, particularly the uncharacteristically verbose “I
Wait For You.” ‘Race’ includes “Gnaw,”
a love-song / reminiscence hybrid which could easily go
toe to toe with any randomly chosen all-time indie classic
– Pavement’s “Gold Soundz,” for
instance. The aforementioned untitled split 7” with
R.L. Kelly features three of his best pieces, in particular
“Magic Mirror” which, in less than 90 seconds,
proceeds to hollow the listener out completely.
The list goes on, and the more time one spends parsing through
this thick back catalog, the more rewarding it proves. Prior
to ‘DSU’, however, Alex’s best stuff existed
only on YouTube, posted by a handful of users who seem to
have access to a large swath of his music which he himself
has chosen not to share in an official capacity. The YouTube
user ‘Keyan28’ has posted a dozen or so excellent
rarities, all of which really ought to be compiled and sequenced
somewhere more prominent given how mind-bendingly excellent
they are. “Sarah” is one such track, a masterpiece
of Brian Wilson/Bach level counterpoint which is, for my
money, the best thing Alex has ever done – my entire
face slackens every time I listen to it, and the fact that
it has less than 3,000 views is a crime against humanity.
“Kara” is similarly great, a quiet, shambling
number that progresses through a series of impossibly perfect
little harmonic turns; “Break” is analogous
in tone and just as good – again, the list simply
goes on. Other equally essential moments are to be found
elsewhere; “Be Kind” exists only as a video
of Alex playing it alone in an abandoned stairwell, “Nintendo
64” on a random YouTube account with only the faintest
apparent connection to Alex, and so on. To be an Alex G
fan, then, is to indulge in a bit of obscurism, and truly
this is part of the fun – the joy of stumbling across
a new song, only to realize, yet again, that it is actually
one of the best things I have ever heard has been an endlessly
enjoyable enterprise over the last few months, and the more
time I spend doing this, the more Alex’s entire existence
feels like some kind of incredible, inexplicable gift to
fans of “indie music” in general, whatever that
tired term may mean in such a new and exciting context.
Now, of course, we have DSU, and it will be easier
to introduce people to Alex’s music because of it –
here, as with ‘Trick’, we have an album which
collects all of Alex’s disparate strengths and offers
them in a readily digestible package. Unlike ‘Trick’,
however, DSU does not simply sum up what Alex is
good at – it pushes his sound into uncharted territories,
and as such prior fans of his music will find it simultaneously
familiar and challenging. On the whole, DSU may even
be better than ‘Trick’, which I never imagined
myself saying – the expectations that I brought to this
album were unfair in the extreme, and Alex responded by offering
a collection of songs that obliterated such preconceptions
as a matter of course. It is a masterpiece of a record –
totally schizoid in terms of style, veering happily between
pop immediacy and a sort of mid-fi psychedelia, at once approachable
and esoteric: I cannot imagine a better showing for Alex’s
first outing on something approaching a “center stage.”
For in many ways, DSU feels like a debut for Alex,
or at least a showcase of heretofore-unprecedented stature.
For one, it is his first release with the rising Brooklyn
label Orchid Tapes, a loose collective of musicians who are
arguably producing the best and most exciting music in the
entirety of Indiedom at the moment. The label, home to the
likes of Sam Ray (Teen Suicide, Julia Brown, Ricky Eat Acid)
and Mat Cothran (Coma Cinema, Elvis Depressedly) has proven
itself over the last few years to be a bright light in the
otherwise dreary landscape of independent music. Through word
of mouth, organic snowballing of hype (as opposed to the top-down
manufacturing of hype which seems all-pervasive in the upper
echelons of indie) and a roster of uncommonly talented songwriters
and musicians, Orchid Tapes are rightfully posed to become
a Big Deal in the near future – as such, it makes sense
that Alex has signed with them. Both Orchid Tapes and Alex
G have built their reputation upon little more than putting
their money where their mouths are – no corporate interests,
PR firms, trendy management, or payouts have been involved
in establishing them as new and exciting entities. They have
simply worked hard, and garnered a formidable host of fiercely
loyal acolytes. In a current musical climate where our attention
drifts from one artist to the next on a daily basis, in accordance
with what one or two trendmaking websites has deemed worthy
of our ears, this type of ground-up structuring is in short
supply and, as a function of such scarcity, proves extremely
refreshing.
Thus, DSU’’s release through Orchid Tapes
feels like an Event for a host of reasons. The people devoted
to this artist and to this label are exactly that –
devoted, to the core, of their own accord. The press DSU
has received this week (highly positive reviews from Pitchfork,
Rolling
Stone, and Consequence
of Sound, amongst others) feels like a serious victory,
a sort of coup staged on the hulking monstrosity of the music
blogosphere by a small group of people who have made it happen
through a mixture of elbow grease and serious talent. DSU
is only the label’s third vinyl release, and the first
pressing of 250 records sold out in a number of hours. The
second went almost as fast, the third is selling well, and
the cassettes were gone instantly. While both Orchid Tapes
and Alex G are relatively small enterprises, this release
in particular feels like the biggest moment for each of them,
and for myself, an ardent fan of both, it feels like the most
exciting moment in music since the beginning of this decade.
None of this would be worth mentioning, obviously, if DSU
wasn’t almost comically good. I knew Alex was extremely
talented, but I must confess, I did not know he had something
like this in him. The album retains, and even serves to amplify,
Alex’s two core strengths: his first-class songwriting,
and his intrinsic weirdness. New and old influences can be
glimpsed in the kaleidoscope of this thing – the percussive,
harmonic laden guitar-playing characteristic of Modest Mouse’s
Isaac Brock (“Axesteel”), the hypnotic, krautrock-flavored
instrumentation of mid-period Deerhunter (“Serpent Is
Lord”), the warped, childlike pop-immediacy of Guided
By Voices (“Harvey”). But, as with all great albums,
Alex weaves these preoccupations into a tapestry that is unmistakably
his. To some extent, DSU reminds me of Deerhunter’s
2010 album ‘Halcyon Digest’, insofar as each record
feels a bit like flipping through an old record catalog while
on acid. In this vein, DSU is not a coherent listen,
and this is part of its appeal upon repeat listens. Each song
feels like a perfect little diorama set in an alternate universe
– all of them include recognizable elements, but they
are presented in such a way that they seem to belong to Alex
alone, to originate with him, within his world. It is nothing
short of breathtaking.
The enhanced production (and mastering, which is a first for
Alex) also helps enormously. What were once rough sketches
are now vivid realities, and just as Alex’s songwriting
often feels as if it has its roots in a place unknown to most
of us, so too with the textural choices he has made on this
album. The creepy, bit-crushed pitch-shifting of his own unaffected
voice is particularly effective, as are the woodwind-esque
synth textures, which are something of a trademark for him,
but which are here processed in a new way. The sonic landscape
of each track differs massively from one to the next, and
the sequencing of the album is not conducive to a holistic
experience. But all of this is in service of Alex’s
greater vision, as the album bucks and revolves like some
kind of extra-dimensional roller coaster ride. The sky-screaming
charge of opener “After Ur Gone” leads into the
snarling, discordant churn of “Serpent Is Lord”;
the doll-house creepiness of “Black Hair” gives
way to the gliding, acousmatic riffs of “Skipper.”
The record culminates with some of its strongest material,
the surprisingly lucid and immediate “Boy,” and
the record’s centerpiece, “Hollow.” The
latter is exceptional even for Alex, a four-minute, slow burning
confessional that threatens to completely break your heart
every time it is played. It is an absolute showstopper, replete
with wind chimes and Justin Vernon-esque choral harmonies
– to me, it feels like the autumn wind blowing through
my hair on a walk home alone at night. It is otherworldly;
I cannot think of another song as good as “Hollow.”
On the whole DSU is, then, everything Alex’s
small group of fervent fans could have possibly hoped it
would be, and with it a set of interesting questions for
Alex and for his label are set into motion. Alex Giannascoli,
for all intents and purposes, remains a peculiar and idiosyncratic
college student who just happens to have the best musical
mind of anyone under 30. He hardly promotes, he apparently
does not care about how he is received, or even if people
hear his best music which, I assert, is the best stuff that
has come out, bar none, in the last 15 years. The implications
of this are fascinating – does Alex G point towards
the next step for indie rock? We constantly hear how bored
everyone is with Pitchfork & co. and their stultifying
monopoly over what is designated as “cool” –
but Alex has done this without them, or anyone like them;
in truth, Alex has done this practically alone. People simply
love Alex’s music – they trade it, they discuss
it, they purchase it and come to see it live without being
told to by any sort of tastemaker. And he is really making
progress – in New York, at least, I have been hearing
about him nonstop this summer, and almost always in a favorable
capacity. The Brooklyn show I saw him at was positively
electric; when Alex got on stage, I got the same feeling
in my stomach that I get from watching live Bob Dylan footage
from the mid-1960’s – the feeling that the man
on stage is better at what he does than anyone else in the
world. When I looked around the room, I could tell that
I was not alone.
Alex is becoming a big deal, in a way that people aren’t
supposed to become big deals anymore – organically.
And what’s more, his label is along for the ride.
The two are growing in tandem, as artists like Alex, the
aforementioned Sam Ray and Mat Cothran, and other excellent
signees like Infinity Crush and R.L. Kelly hit their stride
simultaneously, engendering a very real feeling that the
sky is the limit on this thing. In watching this unfold
over the last year, I have felt increasingly that the flowering
of this entire scene is serving to subvert many of the negative
aspects of the independent music world at large. Here, a
group of uncommonly talented artists has gotten together
and pushed each other collectively to be the best that they
can be; they have built this thing themselves, promoted
it themselves, kept it afloat themselves, and made money
off of it themselves. They have remained outsiders and,
in so doing, their success feels real and exciting in a
way that almost nothing does anymore. Those who support
them feel like a part of their family because they are a
part of their family – by organic it is meant that
everyone takes part. In many ways the spirit of community
has been lost in indie over recent years – while we
all visit the same websites and listen to the same artists,
we do it because we are told to and we do it without really
communicating with one another. Orchid Tapes stands in opposition
to this, and certainly the very existence of Alex G stands
in opposition to this.
We keep hearing that traditional, “guitar based”
indie music is dead – but when faced with an artist
as good as Alex, one is forced to admit that this simply
is not true. He is so good and so exciting that it feels,
on the contrary, alive and well. We keep hearing that the
internet-based indie music distributing/consumption machine
is broken – but with a label like Orchid Tapes, who
utilize the Internet in a new way, such a concern feels
similarly absurd, and even outdated. We hear that the traditional
album release cycle is no longer effective – but Alex
and Orchid Tapes release music in a new way that is effective.
We hear that money needs to be poured into an artist before
they can be picked up by the proper channels – but
artists like Alex and labels like Orchid Tapes work without
that money through different channels. In light of all of
this, then, one can glimpse the first hopeful stirrings
of a paradigm shift in the way that indie music is discovered
and consumed. The dull era which we find ourselves in may
yet prove to be a slouch and not an end, and perhaps, simply
by virtue of how stupidly, unthinkably, preposterously good
he is, Alex will show us the way out.
The cover of DSU features a painting of a football
player, in mid-stride, running down the field. The ball
is tucked beneath his arm, and there is not another player
in sight – it looks like he is running for a touchdown.
When I look at it, I imagine Alex Giannascoli underneath
the helmet.
Check out Alex G’s music at http://sandy.bandcamp.com/
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