By Tess Wayland

“The first pig made his house of straw” 

The audience jeers. “Don’t boo.”

“And the second pig made his house of sticks.”

Cue guitar shred. Audience roars. Bricked-house pig waits in the wings.

Alexander Giannascoli, known by his double-abbreviated stage name Alex G, seems to understand the guitar as a machine that is fundamentally made to farm screams. Between each of these spoken lines he would strum his guitar. Each time, the audience would shriek or clap on his cue. We were two songs into the concert and a snare drum had already broken. The audience was growing impatient and decided to intervene in G’s silence. They began with cursory “I love you” screams, whose parasocial tenor is too passé to even comment on. But eventually they asked G to tell them a story. “I don’t have a story I feel comfortable telling to this many people,” he retorted. Well, then, they instructed, make one up.

G, however, seems to already have taken their directive. He much prefers the mode of “Once upon a time” to that of a faux-confessional artist who tells their fans how lucky they are and how beautiful it is to all be together. One song was introduced with a snide-toned story about a song passed down by his “great-great-great grandfather” who had told him to play the song next time he was in Boston. He could only thank the audience under the cover of wah-wah pedals and Auto-Tune, screaming into the mic until it sounded like a song: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Perhaps G is the last showgirl Taylor Swift has gone looking for, commandeering the audience with a bedazzled gold accordion. 

Everyone I regaled with my concert tales liked to remind me that G is notorious for being drunk at his shows. But what I saw read less like intoxication and more like discomfort. It was the first night of his 2025 Headlights tour and it seemed like G may have genuinely forgotten that his job was to be comfortable in front of this many people. Between most songs, he declined to work the crowd or say something about how charming Boston Common had been that afternoon. He just let the amp hiss. Rainbow Christmas lights flickered behind him, strung upon nonchalant fuck-you scaffolding and wrapped around trunks of equipment. Together they seemed to vindicate my theory that G was only interested in the two extremes of the stage: confirming its spectacle and denying its performance.

The audience scream-requests so typical of our viral-one-hit-wonders ecosystem seemed at G’s concert to be genuinely rude and even invasive. That night, all people wanted to hear were “Harvey” and “Sarah,” songs he released over a decade ago, before he had a kid and an ecclesial animal album. They didn’t dare ask for “Pretend.” He was one step ahead of them: “We’ll do this next one and then we’re gonna do an encore and we’ll play “Harvey” in the encore. We knew exactly what you’d request,” he said, switching his voice to a whine, “Sarah, Harvey. We knew it all.” 

About midshow, he tipped his hat to say he even knew their unspoken desires as his guitarist, Sam Acchione, played the opening riff of “Pretend,” the kind of sweet E-chord strum that lends it to dorm rooms and fire pit singalongs. Then in came the drums and a foreboding suite of synths. His guitarist began to punch the strings with his fist. For two minutes, G’s band put forth a wall of sound —an souped-up rendition of the 2017 track “Brick” — as he rocked back and forth at the piano, sometimes playing the keys or screaming gutturally unintelligible words into a distorted mic. “I know that you’re lying. You think I don’t, but I always fucking do.” I watched the little boy in front of me stream the whole thing on Discord video chat for his three little buddies as his parents tried to figure out how to possibly dance to this music behind him.

When the encore arrived, G broke from his promises and played a punk rock Old MacDonald and a Kermit-voiced “Far and Wide” before finally capitulating to the old show biz adage: give the people what they want. As it always goes, the words he didn’t want to say were the truest of all: I don’t want to be me, but I want to pretend for you.

alex g review

christmas lights

scaffolding, playing into nonchalance

mama come out and rescue Meeeeeeee

gold glittering accordion 

broken a snare already (or was it a cymbal)

“tell a story” 

i don’t have a story i feel comfortable telling to this many people

make one up

once upon a time…

three little pigs

out of straw to boos

“the second one made his house out of sticks” to applause into guitar and bass riff 

hey JJ to someone in the pit

little boy in front of me video chatted his discord friends into the concert

always leaning into mic

guistarist oucnhign with his fist onto the strings

m nm

not rly talking between songs letting the amps hiss

play harvey screams — a concert where where it seems rude

this next one is an original somg passed down from my great great great grandfather

next time ur in boston play this song and they’re gonna love it

thank you great great grandfather i love you so much

extended piano aolo

scream THANN YOU into mic and then do with pitch up effec

thank you thank you thank you

you ever seen moana? what can i say except ur welcome. great movie

sam ameyone guitra mandolin keyboard

tom kelly drums

john haywood bass

well do this and then we’re gonna do an encore and we’ll play harvey in the encore

we knew exactly what you’d request *whiny voice* sarah harvey we knew it all we got it all locked in our memory banks

old macdonald encore

now i can close my eyes kermit voice