Wednesday, November 9th

Alex G
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Brandon Can’t Dance

$10 adv / $12 dos

Not long after he finished recording Beach Music, his seventh full-length and Domino debut, Alex Giannascoli found himself in unfamiliar territory. “I took the record to a studio,” he says, “to get it mixed and mastered by some pros. But I was really nervous—usually, I’d just do everything myself and then put it out myself. I have this really precise vision and the best understanding of what I want to do.”

Over the course of six self-recorded and mostly self-released LPs, that vision has come to bear in frequently breathtaking, innately melodic forms. As Alex G, the Philadelphian singer-songwriter has built and feverishly shared a body of work unassuming in its presentation but astounding in its depth, a stream of recordings so rich and expansive that settling on a favorite song is nearly impossible: The moment you finally choose one, you discover another you hadn’t heard yet.

Beach Music was written and recorded in Giannascoli’s apartment, between the Fall of 2014 and the Spring of 2015, during breaks from touring with the likes of Elvis Depressedly, Cymbals Eat Guitars, and Gardens & Villa. While its predecessors often came in uninterrupted bursts—from his head to his Bandcamp page in a matter of hours and days—Beach Music was shaped in part by Giannascoli adapting to life as a touring musician. Songs were written within months of one another rather than all at once, with influences ranging from noise music to piano-based laments to Southern rock to the rhythmic focus of techno—whatever he happened to be most interested in at the time. “Every song is coming from a different place,” he says. “It branches off in all these directions, but it has its own sound. It’s not something I do intentionally, but I’m the common thread.”

The result is Giannascoli’s most cohesive and beautiful work to date, as heard in the iridescent guitars of “Bug,” the starlit whispers of “Mud,” and the singularly strange harmonics of “Brite Boy.” Some feature parts of songs that he began writing as a kid; all are haunting additions to a songbook whose rewards continue to evolve and multiply with every listen. “I wanted this album to sound really warm and unpretentious and unfiltered,” he says. “I wanted to make music that was completely honest, music that was coming really naturally to me. I don’t know what or who I am if I’m not writing songs.”