Alex Giannascoli has had a career so prodigious it could serve as the basis of a mockumentary in the vein of Christopher Guest or the Lonely Island. Over a decade after he began staking his claim in Bandcamp real estate as a teenager under the moniker Alex G, the Pennsylvania native and DIY enthusiast announced in early 2024 that he’d signed to RCA. The major-label jump was surprising, but there were indicators pointing in that direction: We already knew he’d be opening for stadium mainstays and RCA recording artists Foo Fighters later that summer. The year prior, he’d notched a co-writing credit on the UMG-signed Lil Yachty’s rock crossover Let’s Start Here. He was booking late night shows while still looking like the kind of guy who records at home. He was TikTok-beloved, he was working on his second feature film score, and he was hitting up the studio with at least one pop star. You know that was him playing on Blonde, right?
Now that we’ve arrived at Giannascoli’s 10th official LP and major-label debut Headlights, out this Friday, it’s become hard to say something about Alex G that hasn’t already been said. Headlights is great, as are the nine albums preceding it, a winning streak the 32-year-old Giannascoli holds over the legends he’s been drawing comparisons to since he was 18: Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Mark Linkous. That quantity-to-quality ratio should be astonishing, should make you wonder why that RCA deal didn’t come sooner. But it’s not astonishing, because this is Alex G we’re talking about. Incredible songs spill out of him, typically at the intersection of gorgeous and ever-so-slightly unnerving, and Headlights boasts plenty of incredible, gorgeous, ever-so-slightly unnerving songs. But Giannascoli, much more reserved than your average internet phenom, has also earned a reputation for his ambiguous and fantastical lyrics, embodying numerous narrators who were never too beholden to reality. Headlights, on the other hand, is his most diaristic record to date — an attempt to say something about Alex G that hasn’t already been said.
And so Giannascoli introduces Headlights with a confession: Being above-indie famous isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. “End of my rope I/ I swung so freely,” go the first lines of the delicate opener “June Guitar,” as if alluding to the odd comforts of finding yourself at rock bottom — people aren’t expecting as much of you when you’re down there, and at least you know things probably won’t get worse.
Giannascoli hasn’t sung much about explicitly wanting to die, but a lot of his songs carry a sort of indifference towards mortality, perhaps exacerbated by his interest in the metaphysical and the potential of higher powers. On his previous album, 2022’s God Save The Animals, he considered the cycle of life and death on a grander scale. Headlights doesn’t fear death, but it’s the most content Giannascoli has ever sounded about being alive, those rock-bottom moments instead becoming opportunities for a spiritual rebirth: “When the light came, big and bright/ I began another life,” he belts gleefully over a mandolin jangle on lead single “Afterlife,” victorious over his demons.
“Afterlife” hinted that making a living as a musician would be a central theme of Headlights; though Giannascoli isn’t necessarily known for his literalness, “Let me write down every word/ Once I was a mockingbird” feels like a direct reference to the evergreen songwriting grind. But, believe it or not, he gets even more direct than that: “Some things I do for love/ Some things I do for money/ It ain’t like I don’t want it/ It ain’t like I’m above it,” he sings on the slow-burner “Beam Me Up,” an eerie two-chord progression reminiscent of moments on Giannascoli’s 2014 breakout DSU. Along with songs like “June Guitar” and the title track, it’s one of numerous times on the record he conjures a moral crossroads between his musical pursuits and real-world relationships.
And speaking of DSU, “Beam Me Up” also gets a little ostensibly self-referential: “I’m gonna put that football way up in the sky.” Maybe it’s a longshot to think he’s nodding to the pigskin-wielding athlete on DSU’s cover, but that longshot feels shorter once he wedges in the title of his 2017 record a couple of lines later: “I’m gonna put that rocket way up in the sky.” With the sport reference in mind, it almost feels like Giannascoli, often dubbed the GOAT in his own right, is picturing his career milestones as jerseys lifted into the rafters, forever committed to such an illustrious status.
But this is an Alex G album, after all, so Giannascoli still manages to leave much of his words up to interpretation: “No, I never thought I was the real thing/ There were certain tests I thought that I would pass,” he sings in a chilled-out reverie “Real Thing,” which pairs an otherworldly, medieval-sounding pan flute with some of the album’s stickiest hooks. The “real thing” in question can apply to numerous circumstances — maybe Giannascoli is saying he never thought he could make it big as a musician, or maybe he’s doubting his ability to be a good friend, partner, or father (Reddit sleuths have deduced that Giannascoli has a child with his longtime partner and violinist Molly Germer). “Maybe when you’re older you can give me that,” he adds offhandedly at the track’s end, warming up to the idea that he might truly be one of his generation’s most influential and talented songwriters. Try asking him again when he turns 40.
Longtime Alex G fans needn’t worry that a deal with RCA curtailed Giannascoli’s singular approach. Like God Save The Animals, Headlights comprises plenty of pop melodies with fabulous guitar tones: Songs like “Afterlife,” the live-recorded closer “Logan Hotel,” and “Oranges” show Giannascoli is prioritizing making music that’s pleasing to the ears. Returning with his longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait as his main producer, Giannascoli used his bigger budget to make Headlights at a handful of different studios in and around Pennsylvania.
The production value on Headlights is higher, but Giannascoli certainly isn’t gunning for a TikTok hit, granting himself plenty of time to get weird and experimental between the more conventional moments: The pseudo-interlude “Bounce Boy” is an upbeat bop replete with vocal distortion, a skittering drum machine, and an addictive guitar riff. The leaden slowcore love song “Louisiana” ticks off the Alex G trope of using a woman’s first name — “Marry me, Louise” — but you can hardly discern it through the muddled, reverb-heavy production that makes it sound like you’re in the stadium parking lot just before one of those Foo Fighters gigs.
The minimal “Is It Still You In There” is little more than a piano and what sounds like a children’s choir a half-mile away, making you feel like the target of the ego and superego going to bat in Giannascoli’s head: “Has your wish come true?/ Is there nothing left between the world and you?” the voices coo, suggesting he’s worried he might have already given all he has to offer. On a goofier note, he does full-on Neil Young cosplay on “Far And Wide,” not just in the song’s folk-standard composition but in the comically-nasal drawl he employs — perhaps a subtle dig at the uninitiated who’ve written him off as just another white boy with a guitar.
Giannascoli is just as susceptible to self-doubt and impostor syndrome as the next guy, but at this point, he likely understands how revered he is. Still, he’s never been as famous as he is right now, and most human beings would struggle to strike a balance between their personal and professional lives when their professional life is personal by trade. “I’ve been on the road for a long time/ I’m about to lose my mind/ Once you get the feeling you got two lives/ Well, now you gotta pick a side,” Giannascoli muses on “Logan Hotel.”
You can picture him scratching his head in perplexion, tracing the line between cutting his teeth in Philly basements and making a living as a bonafide rock star. He doesn’t pretend there’s no downside to all your dreams coming true, but he tackles the topic with a refreshingly hopeful approach. “I ain’t gonna let you go/ Buddy, come on now,” he sings in the record’s final lines, and it almost feels like he’s singing to another version of himself. Headlights forges boundaries between Alex Giannascoli and Alex G — neither mutually exclusive of each other nor the same persona. The most effective way to navigate stardom, as Giannascoli tells it, is letting both live harmoniously.
Headlights is out 7/18 via RCA.
