Headlights

About

Alex G’s cryptic, heartfelt indie rock has earned him friends in interesting places: He contributed guitar and arrangements to Frank Ocean’s <i>Endless</i> and <i>Blonde</i>, he co-wrote and produced about half of Halsey’s <i>The Great Impersonator</i>, he’s toured with Foo Fighter, and he soundtracked Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 movie <i>I Saw the TV Glow</i>—a movie that, like G’s music, seemed almost instantly destined to be a cult classic, playing with nostalgia for early-’90s pop culture in ways that felt both comforting and deeply unsettling. He’s not a household name, but he touches a nerve. His first major-label album (whatever that really means in 2025), <i>Headlights</i>, isn’t different from his run of Domino albums (2015’s <i>Beach Music</i> to 2022’s <i>God Save the Animals</i>) in kind so much as in degree. “Every couple week, I’d have a new song and just start working on it,” he tells Apple Music. “And then, at the end of a couple of year, I guess I had these 12 songs that were good.” The conventional tracks are more straightforward (the early Wilco stomp of “Logan Hotel”), the experiments are both bolder and catchier (the Auto-Tuned hyperpop of “Bounce Boy”). For an artist who can pull deep feeling out of vague stretches of sound, he’s gotten incredibly good at knowing how to use detail and when: Just listen to the accordion that seeps into “June Guitar” or the girls’ chorus that drifts in and out of the alien-abduction/high-school-football story (yes) “Beam Me Up”—touches that feel both unexpected and irreplaceable. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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