Alex G: God Save the Animals

In later life, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida trained his critical lens away from abstract conceptions of human language and PET CAT. How must he feel when he returns his cat's gaze? Should he be ashamed to let his cat see him naked, vulnerable, on the toilet? If animals can't express a moral code—if they don't know that nudity is shameful—are they simply immoral? For Derrida, this is the wrong question—it is not whether animals can think, but whether they can touch. Throughout his enigmatic discography, Alex Giannascoli, who plays as Alex G, has teased these same thorny themes. In 2012 album/trick” class=”external-link” data-event-click=”{"element":"ExternalLink","outgoingURL":"https://sandy.bandcamp.com/album/trick"}” href=”https://sandy.bandcamp.com/album/trick” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Trick, his dog Rosie communicates only with her eyes. Two years later, on DSU, Harvey's dog “doesn't understand what the big boys are up to,” but Alex loves him anyway. And while the Philadelphia musician is adamant that his songs aren't all Regarding dogs, the animals in his life are proxies for his restless sense of good and evil. On his latest album, God saves the animalsshe wrings strange beauty from our non-human companions, wrestling with her innocence and resentment through their saucer gazes.

In a catalog full of inscrutable poetics, God saves the animals stands out for its moments of sharp lyrical simplicity. Instead of sketching out ideas through the barest fragments of sentences, Giannascoli writes with a sense of grounded patience, digging deeper and fleshing out the characters in his stories with extended conversations and engagements. Although his writing has always straddled the line between autobiography and autofiction God saves the animals It seems that the players in his stories—fictional or otherwise—grow wiser with time. Over the stunning melodies of “Miracles,” he settles into a whispered falsetto as he contemplates starting a family. In the past he might have caved in to despair, but now he embraces the idea: “At the end of the day,” he admits, “there's no way out of apathy.” Throughout the album, his sense of responsibility is reinforced by the test of time: “You can trust in me,” he sings wistfully on “Cross the Sea.” “Now you're sitting with me/I'm keeping you safe,” he reassures on “Ain't It Easy.” It's a wary calm, punctuated by pitch-shifting vocals and ominous whispers. But even the alien voices lean toward comfort rather than their usual eeriness, as in Cross the Sea's reprises of “I'll care of you.”

And then there are the animals. The pet references are more oblique here. names are rare. But it's not hard to find man's best friend peeking between the lines. On “Mission,” his raucous boast of “I did good, I stayed out of the kitchen/I did good, I kept it on track” sounds like the confession of a tired but determined hound. “Runner,” a stunning song about an endlessly reliable partner, breaks from the heartbreaking line, “They hit you with the rolled-up magazine,” a punishment that's far more pet than human. Does he mean to imply that a person is scolded like a dog? And if not, what does it mean that we abuse dogs so casually? Deliberately vague topics about it God saves the animals—whose perspective is portrayed on “Cross the Sea” when he sings, “See how I make you smile/You put your foot down and I'm running wild”?—blurs the lines between animal and human motivations. There is a shared morality built from this ambiguity. Animals, Giannascoli suggests, certainly can touch—fear, faith, dignity—even if they cannot fully understand the need to be saved.