Phoebe Bridgers with Alex G

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Alex G writes short, melodic songs that keep their rough edges on purpose, with a pitched-up vocal or a stray unpolished sound left exactly where a tidier record would have removed it. The tunes are direct and the hooks land quickly, but the ground shifts underneath them from one track to the next. He plays most of the parts himself, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards among them, and treats his voice as another instrument to be layered, pitch-shifted and processed until the singer becomes a character rather than the writer. Those characters carry the words, pairing a storybook plainness of language with subject matter that is anything but innocent. He began by posting self-recorded songs online as a teenager and built an audience that way before any of the usual machinery was involved, and the work has stayed home-made in spirit since. The catalogue runs from folk-rock through to something much harsher, and he has also turned up as a guitarist on other artists' records, including work with Frank Ocean. The appeal is in what he leaves unsanded. The seams show, and the songs land harder for it than a smoother version of the same writing ever would.