The Key Studio Sessions: Alex G

It takes a moment to wrap your brain around the sheer volume of music on Alex G‘s Bandcamp page. Five full-lengths, three EPs and four standalone singles, all released in the past five years – most released in the past two – but recorded in fits and starts in various apartment bedrooms and suburban houses, ever since the man behind the project, Alex Giannascoli, was a teenager.

But he’s not just prolific for prolific’s sake; there seems to be a definite method to Alex’s madness, whether you’re talking about his DIY discography or his on-point live band. Instruments are arranged in a minimal but alluring manner – the interplay of chiming guitar lead with the chugging rhythm strums on “Black Hair” is intoxicating; the thumping floor toms on “Soaker” are moving and emotive. Then there are his lyrics, which are just as specific and descriptive as they are loose and mysterious – like “Wicked Boys,” and its mantra-like opening “real men walk / on the outside / and they take it for the team.”

Alex G has rightfully attracted a lot of attention locally as well as internationally – from the likes of Rolling Stone, NME and more – and his appeal is very much the same as that of Kurt Vile during his own home-recording days a decade ago. He’s a dude making music on his own terms. He comes from an artistic upbringing (his mother did the painting on the cover of 2012’s Rules; his sister did the trippy football stadium illustration on his buzzed-about 2014 record DSU) and his songs reflect an intake of generations of records (I hear bits of The Beatles and The Velvet Underground as easily as Pavement and Ben Kweller). He’s now repped by a proper label, Domino, and his next LP is sure to take him to bigger places.

For now, though, Alex G plays the second installment of OK Fest, a spectacular three-day throwdown at PhilaMOCA and the First Unitarian Church starring the local punk community and benefitting the Attic Youth Center – a Philly resource and outreach nonprofit aimed at creating opportunities for LGBTQ youth. More information on the festival can be found here; below, stream Alex G’s Key Studio Session, watch a video of “Soaker” and “Rules,” and download the whole set for free at Soundcloud.