Alex G – Beach Music (Domino USA, 2015)
Finding focus in fragile vocals and wet, nervy guitar, Alex Giannascoli is the middle man between his tender world where he crafts his long melancholic melodies. Playing in a pool of tone and pitch modulation, Giannascoli isn’t writing songs alone in his Pennsylvania bedroom anymore. New characters carry these songs, like the little creature singing at the end of the instant buzzing hit “Bug.” Gifted with a neat trick, Giannascoli can keep a melody spinning like a basketball on his finger. He opens every chord in the hall until the refrain softly resolves itself. Beach Music ranges from comfortably settling into Giannascoli’s warm persona to jumping into eerie dissonance. The changing face of the album gives it a lively buoyancy, as if Giannascoli beckoned to the monsters under his bed and they thrashed about in a frenzy of new sounds.
Trial Track: “Bug”
9/10
