Alex G – God Save the Animals

Alex G does animals, not people. On his magnum opus, the title of which conjures images of divine intervention in ecological disaster, the songwriter Alex Giannascoli takes religious language and grasps for a faith in someone to do something, whether it’s 'God' or just someone to look up to.

It’s his most sonically consistent record, with beautiful textural piano underlying almost every song. And yet, Giannascoli is determinedly genre agnostic. You could say he dabbles in mumblecore, nu-metal, hyperpop – but the truth is he does all and none at the same time, and still turns the darkness into light on the turn of a devastating key change.

There is a digital cursedness that corrodes almost everything, even on the more conventional pieces. Often vocals seem almost deadened (see: the confounding Cross the Sea), like trying to recreate the text-to-speech techniques of Lucy Liyou organically and letting them lead pop songs.

Giannascoli has been a ventriloquist dummy for characters that range from downtrodden to marginalised, employing vocal manipulation to the point it’s hard to determine if he’s the one singing at all. It can be genuinely subversive, sometimes queering archetypal narratives, or generally creating a porous line between reality and fiction. Or it can sound like a super villain disintegrating.

On God Save the Animals, perhaps it isn’t Bobby, Mary, Sarah or even Sandy this is about, but Alex. Who cares – the fun is not knowing.

Listen to: After All, S.D.O.S, Ain’t It Easy