Alex G’s 10 Best Songs

Abby Jones and Paolo Ragusa
·8 min read

The post Alex G’s 10 Best Songs appeared first on Consequence.

Let’s just get this out of the way: This list could be 50 songs long and wouldn’t even cover half of the great songs written and recorded by Alex Giannascoli, the prolific indie rocker known to most as Alex G.

But, in honor of his 30th birthday on February 3rd, 2023, we’re going to attempt to do the impossible: narrow it down to 10.

Even as a fledgling teenager growing up in sleepy suburbs of Philadelphia, Alex wrote haunting acoustic numbers with a keen wit that belied his youth, often conveyed with a homespun, lo-fi charm. As his star has grown, so has his dexterity, finding ways to make his formula feel fresh without losing his DIY essence.

From YouTube rarities to indie staples, we’ve given our best shot at narrowing down Alex G’s top 10 songs below. Scroll to the end for a playlist of every track (minus one unreleased rarity).

10. “Bug”

Comparisons to artists like Elliott Smith, Pavement, and Sparklehorse have plagued Alex since his music first reached an audience beyond Bandcamp. But with the brooding cadence of “Bug,” an essential track off his 2015 album Beach Music, you can start to see Alex come into his own as not just a talented singer-songwriter, but someone whose influence has already started to leave a wave of its own that’ll last through the coming decades. “Bug” seems normal until its final moments, when a shrill pitch-shifted voice sings “bug in the crosshair,” perhaps an indicator of all the personalities Alex brings into his songwriting world. — Abby Jones

09. “Adam”

Alex’s songs tend to put him in the place of a narrator other than himself. Such is the case with 2012’s “Adam,” a song that — much like its story — feels subtly romantic under its pensive, dismal exterior. Over a chugging, somewhat funereal piano melody, Alex sings from the point of view of a school bully hellbent on assuaging his forbidden crush the only way he knows how: by physically and mentally tormenting him. It’s a scarily nuanced look at the extremities of emotional manipulation; after bringing Adam to tears by stealing his lunchbox and battering him at the pool, the bully of “Adam” gets a sliver of satisfaction by knowing that his taboo flame is thinking of him at home, one way or another. — A.J.

08. “Not So Tough”

The most fervent of Alex G fans would die on the hill of their favorite unreleased track, and for good reason: Many of them are really great, despite their obscurity. But “Not So Tough” is one of his strongest, a dose of folksy dream-pop in which Alex sings over a chorus of guitars. They dwindle and echo, but he never lets them go too far off track. “Don’t talk to me and pretend you care/ You’re not here, you’re not there, you’re not anywhere,” go the track’s final lines, a perfect example of the multifaceted meanings Alex can convey in simple language — an insult and eulogy all at once. –– A.J.

07. “Serpent Is Lord”

It’s easy to see why Alex’s 2014 label debut DSU was the project that lifted him out of the internet’s trenches. The album’s title is an acronym of the off-the-wall phrase “Dream State University,” and among its many highlights is “Serpent Is Lord,” a precarious, eerie rocker that could soundtrack your nightmares. It might be the most lyrically vague song on this list, but it captures Alex’s ear for melody that conjures an emotional vehemence that words perhaps cannot. A pseudo-Pinback interpolation leads the track into its first verse, where Alex’s murmurs are obstructed by a somber, laden bassline. When the motif repeats later, it’s layered with electric guitars that seem to scream, somehow more nagging than a human voice. — A.J.

06. “Forever”

Death has always been a prominent character in Alex’s music — he’s sung of tragedies like mourning friends, watching helpless strangers bleed, and being so infatuated with someone that burying them underground feels like the only suitable option. Death hasn’t lost its allure to Alex on “Forever,” but its permanence is starting to settle in. “We could love you/ Forever and ever,” he sings, before flipping the notion towards himself: “I will pull it together.” He might not know what “it” is yet, or what “forever” might look like, but at least he’s willing to start figuring it out. — A.J.

05. “Sportstar”

Though he’s always had a penchant for idiosyncrasies, Alex’s 2017 album Rocket was when he really began to embrace more electronic styles of music. “Sportstar” perfectly distills the magic that can happen when he builds on his folks backdrop into something even more esoteric. Largely driven by a pattern of four hypnotic piano chords, the track sees its narrator feebly searching for a jock-like tenacity in himself. “Let me wear your jersey/ If you want to hurt me, hurt me,” he sings, though in an inflated AutoTune that seems to imply these voices might not be reliable. But there is a little surefire truth within its haze: “I play how I wanna play/ I say what I wanna say,” he repeats, a self-assured reminder to himself that his listeners plainly see. — A.J.

04. “Hope”

“Hope,” a crushing memorial to Alex G’s friend and a lauded cut from 2019’s House of Sugar, is devastating in its details. “Yeah, fentanyl took a few lives from our life/ alright…,” he croons early on, winding through the verses with references to his friend’s eerie final hours, his own agitation and perspective, and finally, images of the memorial at his house on Hope Street. His shaky deliveries — a frequent vocal choice from Alex G — suggest that the wound is far from close to healing, and the way he replays these images big and small feel lifted directly from his unsteady memory.

He also designs the frequent chord shifts to be both sweet and sour — when the backing vocals line up with his descending verse melodies, it’s an uncanny choir that echoes the bittersweet sentiment. “Hope” is a celebration and a eulogy, one made more nuanced by Alex G’s impressionistic lyrics, and a memorable turn from one of the most intriguing songwriters around. — Paolo Ragusa

03. “Gnaw”

The rough-around-the-edges nature of Alex’s earliest recordings tend to give them a sense of warmth that only makes the dark subject matter all the more disquieting, like a child protagonist in a Stephen King story. “Gnaw,” the crown jewel of Alex’s 2010 studio debut album Race, is perhaps the best example of this, juxtaposing sinister nods to the devil with a deceptively chipper acoustic jangle: “I saw the tree/ I carved in it ‘666’ and he found me,” he sings with a lilt of ominous delight. “There is nothing wrong,” he promises in the last lyric, just before calling in a square-dancing climax that seems to invite Lucifer himself to the hoedown. — A.J.

02. “Miracles”

Many of Alex’s most formative moments are written in the folds of his Bandcamp catalog or one-off songs that have otherwise found their way to the internet’s underbelly; from the beginning, there’s evidence to suggest that he was amenable — or at the very least, ambivalent — to the possibility of dying young. But on “Miracles,” a twangy love song off his 2022 album God Save the Animals, Alex considers his career trajectory and even starting a family.

It embodies the foresighted gumption of Billy Crystal professing his love to Meg Ryan in the center of a crowded New Year’s Eve party: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Better yet, however, “Miracles” isn’t just the stuff of Nora Ephron — it illustrates the trials and joys of authentic love, a phenomenon that can happen to anyone willing to accept it. — A.J.

01. “Gretel”

A standout in both Alex G’s extensive discography and his heartfelt 2019 album House of Sugar, “Gretel” seems to encompass the Philadelphia songwriter’s sharpest impulses: The swampy opening riff and distorted vocals give way to something genuinely beautiful and serene, all while his lyrics build to a point of both desperation and determination. Alex G has never been a stranger to making counterintuitive choices or embracing opposites — all of his songs straddle the line between fictional and all too real, between doubt and certainty. “Gretel” is the sound of a treacherous path becoming actively safer as he navigates, and when the bridge and outro arrives, there’s a sense of peace that rings out from his plucked guitar line and warm chords.

“Gretel” also demonstrates how in touch Alex G is and has been with his sense of playfulness while remaining deeply earnest. There’s a childlike glow that rings from the pitched up vocals, the tossing and turning from the chord changes, and the blunt intensity of his lyrics: “I don’t want to go back/ Nobody’s gonna push me off track,” he sings, referencing both the bitter details of Hansel and Gretel while also convincing you that he, Alex G, is in a similar existential conflict. And as always, his experimental impulses give way to something cathartic and accessible, and it remains one of Alex G’s most impactful and satisfying creations. — P.R.

Alex G’s 10 Best Songs Playlist:

Alex G’s 10 Best Songs
Abby Jones and Paolo Ragusa

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