(I believe that my review of the album for, still listed as the most positive write-up the album got on Metacritic, made precisely that claim.) From the vantage point of 2022, following two game-changing, band-redefining albums from The Killers in 20, I’m not even sure what my favorite Killers album is anymore. There have been times, over the years, where I would have called it the band’s best album. It has always ruled, and it will always rule, and it is the perfect bridge between The Killers that were and The Killers that are today. They’re all wrong: This album fucking rules. I bring all of this up because this weekend marks 10 years since The Killers released Battle Born, their fourth album and an LP that just about everyone – frontman Brandon Flowers included – is convinced is mediocre or downright bad. It’s difficult to keep carrying the torch for an album when even the artist who made it has come to view it as sub-par.

It’s far harder to stand your ground when you love something that everyone else says is dogshit. In the music world, there is something thrilling about the communion that comes with shared adoration: about falling head over heels for something that resonates with a lot of other people at the same time as it resonates with you, or of getting the affirmation that comes from seeing all your friends and family and acquaintances fall in love with an album or artist you already adored. It’s easy to love a thing that everyone else loves. So I wanted to make sure that I expressed that like, when the day comes that we don’t get to do that anymore, the only thing that I will feel towards those people is gratitude.” There’s a lot of times where I’m like, ‘Is this real?’ Like is my fucking life real that I get to do this thing for a living, for all these people, to commiserate with all these people. And I was thinking about how I can’t be anything but grateful, because there’s just like, logically no reason this should’ve happened. “It can be very easy to, and I have seen other artists almost get angry towards the end, or like bitter, as they realize their career is like winding down. Read More “Alex G – God Save the Animals” The Smashing Pumpkins – “Beguiled”ĭan Campbell of The Wonder Years talked with BrooklynVegan about their new album:ĭan also, as many bands who have been at it this long probably do, has been thinking about the day The Wonder Years just don’t get to do this anymore, and he addresses that on “Lost It In The Lights,” where he muses, “What if the magic’s gone? I guess I should be glad that there was any at all.” “I was thinking about career arcs,” Dan tells us. The album is rich with details that become more rewarding with every listen, making God Save the Animals not only an album of the year contender, but among the best work of the songwriter’s career. The album does exactly what most new albums should: it takes the best aspects of Alex G’s past work (his long-term penchant for storytelling, Rocket’s relatively straightforward, country-leaning compositions, and House of Sugar’s use of striking electronic flourishes and pitch-shifted vocals) and miraculously weaves them into something new. At times, God Save the Animals sounds as lush (“Cross the Sea”) as Rachel Giannascoli’s watercolor artwork elsewhere, it sounds barren, quiet, and lonesome (“Ain’t It Easy”).

(Ironically, he’s also convinced that every new project he releases is his worst, at least initially.) Giannascoli chose the title God Save the Animals based on intuition, and to further prove the down-to-earth nature of his work, he chose which studios the album was recorded at based on who was available that day.Īll this to say, if Giannascoli isn’t being meticulous about his constantly evolving craft, he could have fooled us. In a recent Pitchfork feature, Giannascoli admitted to doing a lot of things on the fly sure, he’s always writing, but when it comes to the prolific singer-songwriter’s experimental textures and vocal distortions, he’s really just trying to create something he finds interesting.

Alex G doesn’t do a lot of interviews, but for being a rising enigma in DIY and indie-rock, he seems like a pretty normal guy.

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