An unspoken ideal behind the quest for below-the-radar music is that somewhere out there, a random stranger might be churning out homemade songs that're better than the ones you can find through more established channels. The methods of discovery, the sub-genre descriptors, and the artist names change, but that faith in some undiscovered loner who defies the odds and draws a diehard following (at least somewhat) independently has remained constant. In 2014, one of the most enticing of these bedroom singer/songwriters is Alex Giannascoli, a Temple University student who has built up an audience through putting material out there on the internet.
Recording as Alex G, the Pennsylvania native's gnarled, wobbly, unfailingly melodic guitar pop evokes Big Star, Elliott Smith, and Built to Spill, as well as more recent low-key breakouts like Youth Lagoon and Jackson Scott. His first-ever mastered full-length, DSU, also happens to be one of the first vinyl releases for Brooklyn's fledgling Orchid Tapes, which already this year has offered the emotion-wracked electronic dreamscapes of Ricky Eat Acid's Three Love Songs, along with the label comp Boring Ecstasy. DSU is worthy of its moment, a 13-song set of warped, idiosyncratic sketches each capable of wending its way to a distinct place into the hearts of anyone who ever warmed to the idea of "indie rock".
The elements here are fairly limited, with spidery electric guitar, shambling acoustic guitar, and a smattering of watery keys joining rudimentary bass and drums to frame Giannascoli's sometimes pitch-shifted, fragile coo as he delivers sparse, impressionistic lyrics about the mundane. But what's impressive is the array of potent songs Alex G wrings from those basics, his self-recorded stone soup. There's the strummy innocence (and ambivalence about success) of "Harvey", the feedback-streaked pleading of "Black Hair" ("It's not what you are/ It's just what you did"), the barbed howls of "Axesteel". But there's also the PBR-spilling post-chillwave groove of "Promise", the frosty regret of "Sorry", and the stair-spiraling guitar anti-heroics of "Serpent Is Lord".
Giannascoli's voice is definitely of his do-it-yourself idiom; a comparison that strikes me is Joan of Arc member Bobby Burg's Love of Everything project, so the arguably superfluous chipmunk'd effects on songs like the cavernous "Icehead" will probably be one of the record's more divisive decisions. But it's heartening that Alex G's willing to make off-kilter choices like that one, especially when he veers off into the oddball crackle at the end of "Rejoyce". Even the songs that are closer to fragments have memorable turns, like the wordless harmonies of "Skipper" or the piano goofing of "Tripper".
The most powerfully appealing song on DSU doesn't arrive until the end. "Boy" is one of the album's gentler tracks, a stray-dog reflection centered around piano and acoustic guitars; you could almost imagine it as some forgotten post-Beatles remnant that might've appeared on an early Wes Anderson soundtrack. "I am not the boy you knew," Giannascoli insists. Fact is, he's another in a long line of young people who've found their own weird way to (only slightly) left-of-center acclaim. But his project, like the guy himself, has clearly reached, if not maturity, drinking age at the least. If Alex G keeps it up at this rate, the next round'll be on him.
