Oct. 17 at 9:00 p.m., it was hard to tell the casual food munchers apart from the eager concertgoers at Der Rathskeller. Both groups were ordering food that looked way tastier on the menu than in reality, but regardless they went with their empty gut and took the plunge to order. After the inevitable culinary disappointment settled, the rustic tables and stools were parted to make way for around twenty-five ragtag flannel-wearers eagerly anticipating the performance of Alex G.
Alex G began as most indie cult bands do these days. They gained traction on the Internet after recording six albums from their shared apartment in Philadelphia. Alex Giannascoli, a Temple University student and the band’s frontman/namesake, writes the songs which he plays with his fellow classmates. Due to the dreamy and crisp production, you could hardly tell their songs were recorded at a bedroom desk with a duct-taped microphone hanging over a Macbook.
As they made their way to the stage, Alex G looked like they should’ve been anywhere other than a German beer hall homage. Their long sleeved Gap shirts and blue jeans gave off the vibe of a group of teens entering their high school’s battle of the bands with nothing under their belt but Nirvana covers and cracked vocals.
Their talent, however, was light-years ahead of what their appearance would have you believe. They put the audience through a wash cycle of delicately plucked dream-pop guitars alternating with cacophonous eardrum-ripping solos, which sounded like the uber-indie love child of Built to Spill and Modest Mouse.
The show stealer, however, was none other than Giannascoli himself. It’s worth mentioning that his guitar still had the $199 price taped to its neck, the first indicator that he would be anything other than a typical performer.
Giannascoli proceeded to entertain himself and the audience by strutting like a penguin and flicking his tongue like some sort of devil reincarnate. The rest of the band observed from a distance with a look that indicated this was typical behavior for the 21-year-old songwriter. At the end of Alex G’s last song, “Hollow,” Giannascoli threw his meager body into the his drummer’s 3-piece set, signaling the beautifully unceremonious end of the opening act.
Never before had I seen a headliner’s crowd vary so much from their opener’s. In the time it took Alex G to break down, the audience had transformed from eager college kids to sharply-dressed thirty somethings. Gardens & Villa certainly did their best to fit in with this new group, as each member looked like they walked out of a separate page of the AskMen’s Fashion Column.
They had a bright and breezy sound that resembled their hometown of Santa Barbara. The synthpop group has found themselves in the midst of a synthpop renaissance, with similar bands like Twin Shadow, Holy Ghost! and Cut Copy all attempting to bring back pure unadulterated ’80s pop.
The group has significantly more fame than their basement-dwelling openers, yet they amassed a similarly sized crowd. Whereas attendees of Alex G sang along and swayed to their nostalgic-sounding melodies, listeners of Gardens & Villa did the exact opposite of what the groovy danceable music commanded them to do. Despite one slightly tipsy attendee busting a half-move, most people just bobbed their heads with such subtlety and lack of enthusiasm that it barely registered on the crowd participation seismic scale.
Gardens & Villa did little to accelerate the action. G&V were strictly business with an audience that practically begging to be messed with. To be fair, it’s difficult to get a lot of energy out of a genre like synthpop, which sounds like it was generated by futuristic robots. One high note of the performance was lead singer Chris Lynch’s vocals. His excellent singing brought a tint of emotion to an otherwise tedious set. Overall, Alex G had their audience howling with the freezing winds whipping over the nearby Mendota, while the strained looks of Gardens & Villa indicated that they wanted to be back in sunny Santa Barbara.
As a closing note, I got a chance to ask Giannascoli of Alex G some of his favorite things. His favorite superhero is Batman, his favorite pizza topping is anchovies, his favorite disease is rabies and his favorite version of Mario Kart is Mario Kart 64 because, as Giannascoli states, “You can jump the course on Rainbow Road.”
