Philadelphia-based musician, singer-songwriter and producer Alex G first came to acclaim in his teens releasing lo-fi tracks on Bandcamp. This is the 29-year-old’s ninth album, and it finds him more ambitious, strange and embedded in studio experimentation than before, embracing collaboration with his bandmates as well as his partner, string player and vocalist Molly Germer.
The instrumentation feels stirring, with crisp drums, rippling strings and buoyant keys sliding through vortices of distortion and scuzziness, or else nodding to the country twang of some of his previous work, constantly flitting between melodic and dissonant. The vocals are largely gentle, occasionally echoing in Auto-Tune, or coming via surreal, playful whispers (as on Blessing) or distant spoken word (Headroom Piano), all adding to the vastness of textures on display.
As with all of Alex G’s music, God Save the Animals melds the autobiographical and fictional, with poetic refrains drifting in and out as he considers notions of faith and hope in all its forms (“My teacher is a child with a big smile/ no bitterness”). For the most part it’s a rich and deftly arranged work, and though there’s a warmth that can sometimes border on cloying, he cuts through with chaos and levity.
