“I think I ran nearly every piece of audio on the album through it. It took forever”: Alex G on the ultra-rare vintage compressor that shaped the sound of Headlights

Alex g.

Alex G is the king of the curveball. Half an hour into his latest record, Headlights, the Philadelphia-born indie-rock auteur performs an abrupt costume change, slipping from the wistful acoustic balladry of Oranges into a new outfit on Far and Wide, a nasally theatrical mode that can best be described as ‘Daniel Johnston does ​​Les Misérables’. It’s weird as hell, but it works.

There are no other tracks like this on Headlights. There is little to compare it to across Alex’s catalogue. But in the world of Alex G, that doesn’t preclude a song like this from existing; if anything, it’s all the more reason to lean into the novelty. (On 2022’s God Save the Animals, Alex winkingly channeled ‘00s nu-metal with Blessing, another wildcard of a song that chews up a genre and spits it out reformed.)