Alex Giannascoli, lead singer and guitarist for his eponymous band Alex G, is unassuming and friendly in a flannel and knit beanie on stage; his stage presence is open yet subdued. Occasionally pausing to grit his teeth or bite his lip in concentration, he wears a perpetual expression of deep-focus veering towards boredom. Slicing through his relaxed cool kid demeanor, he throws out lines to the audience like candy, and then throws out candy as well, passing around a giant bar of some caramel-filled chocolate like everyone is a member of the family. Boredom may be the initial impression he gives off by his complete and total comfort on the stage, but it is entirely the wrong word to describe an artist as genuine and warm as Mr. Giannascoli, who invites audience members up on stage to dance as though the stage is just some piece of a basement that everyone is hanging out in together.
Alex G headlined a show at Cuisine En Locale on Feb. 6, with fellow underground darlings Teen Suicide and Palehound.Teen Suicide, the project of perpetual musical shapeshifter Sam Ray, brought a drug-addled mosh pit to the forefront of the stage, while Palehound cooed and revved with darker but more pure melodic consistency.
Merging teen angst with classic rock guitar licks, Palehound is unafraid and challenging. Ellen Kempner, Palehound’s lead singer, sounds vaguely like The Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson and Karen O, but with a touch more of a hard rock edge. Her lyrics may succinctly be categorized as something between modern digital age frustration and timeless teen turmoil, described by the following lyric, “I went downstairs and curled up on the couch, with the cat,” sung with enough grit to be purred from a Harley Davidson rather than a feline.
Teen Suicide interestingly segues into Alex G. They potentially serve as an example of how cross-genre sampling can go astray when there is no centrality. Teen Suicide, the broken-up-and-back-together project in a slew of projects (see Ricky Eat Acid, Julia Brown, Starry Cat, Heroin Party, cumwolf, Cute Boy Kissing Booth, Mad Dads, Dead Virgin, Gremlins, the list goes on) by lead singer Sam Ray, is an electronic outfit made up of seven or eight members (the band's bandcamp includes "sometimes caroline white" as a credit) that veers closer to sludge pop than Alex G does. Yet the chaotic stage presence of Teen Suicide prevents them from being grounded on stage. Meandering to talk about heroin, and divulging into a mosh, the group was fun but overamped. Switching songs and conversation tracks as easily and fluidly as Sam Ray switches projects, they maintain aggressive chord progression and strong tonality but with their flippant digressions are unable to maintain a strength of melodic consistency. There is no doubting Ray’s talent as a musician, but the inclusion of half-played out covers of the “Friends” (1994-2004) theme song feel more uncomfortable than fun after 45 minutes of we-couldn’t-care-less song-playing.
And then Alex G takes the stage in a style that is still fun, but more methodical. Blurring early '60s Beatles melodies and guttural basement rock lyrics, his delivery is slick and smooth, like every song has been lathered in baby oil and then delivered to the audience with a genuine half-smirk. Electronics and synth occasionally enter his songs, but there is an overarching theme of punk-rock and lo-fi indie songwriting. Classifying Alex G is so difficult because Giannascoli blurs the lines between genres so effortlessly that it seems as though the boundaries were never really there at all. Is that Elliot Smith up there on stage or the Beach Boys playing with Kurt Cobain? Modern parallels might inch closer to punk rock outfits like Tigers Jaw and Basement, if only for the sheer power and energy of chargers like “Serpent is Lord”(2014) and “Axesteel”(2014).
Playing hits like “Harvey,” “Hollow” and “Boy” from his 2014 album “DSU,” it was evident that Alex G’s small but loyal online fanbase is becoming larger and more loyal, singing along to almost every song the artist delivered.
With a stellar beginning from Palehound and a magnificent closer from Alex G, the concert managed to balance the chaos of Teen Suicide. Check out the bandcamp accounts of all three artists for a more holistic view of their musical repertoires. Alex G, Teen Suicide and Palehound are all artists to watch.
