Alex G - “Headlights” review
Written by Blake Peck
Alex G by Chris Maggio
Headlights is a raw collage of memory and melody, where Alex G blurs the line between the intimate and the unknowable.
Alex G’s Headlights moves like a fever dream that flickers between the past and present; it gently unravels its emotions in strange, beautiful ways. It’s a record that doesn’t chase clarity but instead lets mystery take the wheel: tender, warped, and wholly immersive.
The album opens with "June Guitar", a hushed introduction that immediately sets the emotional tone. Alex’s voice is bare and direct, surrounded by warm acoustic plucking, harmonies, and a digital organ that make the track feel familiar and warm. It’s a quiet build and allows the listener to reminisce, like stumbling onto a long-lost letter that still carries a pulse.
"Real Thing" is an early standout, pairing a loping rhythm with cryptic lyrics that suggest love, loss, and doubt all at once. There’s an ache buried in the track’s fragile sweetness, and it lingers. The arrangements are a standout, between a soft piano, an almost flute-like refrain within the verse, and a chaotic guitar bridge into soft outro, the track’s abstractness truly shines.
"Afterlife" leans into an upbeat yet spectral mood, with consistent strumming mandolin, airy background vocals and an organized arrangements that allow the track to breathe. It’s haunting without being heavy, like a thought you can’t quite finish but still want to hold onto. The refrain feels circular, as if stuck in a loop of fading memory and sentiment.
With “Beam Me Up,” the album finds its soft emotional centerpiece. The track pairs yearning with gut-level vulnerability. It’s Alex at his most exposed, going from boldly stating his motives and reasoning, to asking to be taken somewhere, anywhere, else. The melody is sparse and aching, carried by a fragile guitar and swirls of echoes that makes it feel like it all could dissolve at any moment.
"Spinning" introduces a jolt of energy, its restless rhythm and shifting structure and arrangements acting like a whimsical musical roller coaster. The momentum is constant and disorienting in the best way, all while the lyrics and vocals remain earnest, and the feeling is unmistakable, everything moving and changing.
Headlights album art. Out this Friday July 18th via RCA
With "Louisiana", echoed drums, a simple guitar loop, and pitch shifted vocals bring the track through the same uniquely skewed lens of melancholy. The track has a weary beauty, conjuring images of graves and ghost towns. It’s grounded yet surreal, and it shows Alex’s knack for evoking places that feel both real and imagined.
"Bounce Boy" is one of the album’s off the wall cuts, beginning electronic and pulsing straight into light airy female vocals. It’s jittery and chaotic, the closest thing to a palate cleanser before diving back into heavier terrain. It may not be for everyone, but its presence adds texture and tension to the flow.
"Oranges" slows things down again, a soft, acoustic, and borderline country tune that circles around images of nostalgia, love, and loss. The lyrics are abstract but emotive, and the understated production gives space for quiet reflection. There’s a subtle moroseness in its simplicity.
"Far and Wide" musically and lyrically sticks with the overarching themes of the album, with beautiful string arrangements, and repeatedly stating boldly “I’m all in pieces.” It doesn’t push the narrative forward as much as let it float, but that stillness is part of what gives Headlights its distinctive pacing. It’s not in a hurry, and that patience pays off.
Alex G by Chris Maggio
The title track, "Headlights", is a slow-driving title track with reverberated guitar layers and delicately paced drums. Alex muses in a tone that feels resigned, as though moving through a fog with no clear destination. It captures the essence of the album: movement without resolution, feeling without form. Instrument arrangements unsurprisingly standout yet again, allowing the listener to contemplate and meander within this cerebral world of emotional weight.
"Is It Still You In There?" is perhaps the most affecting moment on the record. Piano, almost “Peanuts”-inspired choir vocals and keen use of stillness give it a truly somber and jazzy quality, but the core sentiment—disconnection, uncertainty, the fear of change—is deeply human. It feels like the emotional climax, even if it never quite explodes.
The closing track, "Logan Hotel Live", wraps the album with the raw intimacy of a live recording, as if captured from the back of a bar (which it turns out, in some ways, it was). It’s raw, upbeat, and allows for a humble resolution, like the last statement made before you’re about to leave for good. As the only track to feature Alex’s touring members, you can feel the chemistry. There’s no grand finale, just a quiet fade-out, unresolved and brutally honest.
Headlights doesn’t aim to be definitive or neat. Like much of Alex G’s best work, it’s messy, moving, and deliberately out of focus. Amongst his vast amount of work, this isn’t necessarily a departure, but one thing it does prove is that consistency is key. It asks you to sit with it, not solve it, and in doing so, it leaves a mark that’s hard to name but impossible to ignore.
Occult Highlights: Real Thing, Beam Me Up, Is It Still You In There?, Afterlife, Headlights
(…but we recommend you spin the whole thing while staring contemplatively out the window)