God Save the Animals
| Alex G
God Save the Animals
God Save the Animals is the ninth studio album by American musician Alex G, released on September 23, 2022, through Domino Recording Company. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Placing its faith in the healing power of animals and Auto-Tune, Alex Giannascoli’s most hopeful record stands out for its grounded patience and moments of sharp lyrical simplicity.
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Post-Trash
There are moments in God Save The Animals where Alex G appears more free than ever before. Maybe it’s his earnesty in his voice, or perhaps it’s the lyrics, but Giannascoli clearly is finding some form of resolution in all of this, unburdening himself from the circumstances of this material world. The continual abandonment of all certainty, lyrically and musically, makes God Save The Animals so incredibly spellbinding.
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The Harvard Crimson
For Alex G, the difference between heaven and hell comes down to how a voice projects. With this album, he shifts his artistic voice to preach a grateful, not defiant, acceptance of life. It works, superbly. Thank God for Alex G.
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The Guardian
richly textured explorations.
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NME
The cult star's latest is delightfully idiosyncratic, and further confirms his place as one of his generation's most consistently brilliant songwriters.
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The Post
This album is unique lyrically, sonically, artistically and in so many other ways. It is, as a whole, a great album to enjoy as a singular project. The artistry within it sets it apart from anything being released in its genre and for this fact it can be enjoyed for exactly what it is: a piece of art. "God Save The Animals" is something that anyone can enjoy and something everyone can strive to understand.
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Beats Per Minute
God Save the Animals’ production approaches are understated compared to those employed in previous work yet still precisely rendered. What stand out – prominently and unabashedly – are Alex’s impeccably crafted and irresistibly delivered songs. Throughout the sequence, Alex extends compassion and forgiveness to himself and the world, conjuring a sense of engaged acceptance, that while there’s always need for improvement, there may indeed be truth to the maxim that people, individually and collectively, are essentially good.
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The Daily Campus
In a career full of interesting projects, “God Save the Animals” is another left turn for Alex G. It falls into an uncanny valley; even if some sounds may seem familiar, you always feel like something is a bit off. For better or for worse, this album proves that Alex G remains a creative and original force in indie music.
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Treblezine
As an artist whose primary tools are instinct and experimentation, he generates resonance by allowing listeners into his process, exposing a sometimes-discordant range of techniques, perspectives, and emotions. Giannascoli himself remains inscrutable, as do the mysteries of faith. But God Save The Animals offers a breathtaking, inventive chorale of responses to some of life’s most difficult questions—one made richer and truer by its dissonance.
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Paste Magazine
The enigmatic Philadelphia musician takes inspiration from melodic radio rock on his surprising, gorgeous new album.
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Slant Magazine
The album finds the already ponderous Alex Giannascoli in a particularly inquisitive mood.
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Our Culture
His latest album God Save the Animals is the natural culmination of this, a mesmerizing record that’s replete with questions but never shrouds itself in them. As difficult as it is for its cast of characters to carve a single path, it’s never been easier for the listener to follow along.
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Loud and Quiet
God Save the Animals is a typically idiosyncratic set from an artist ploughing his own furrow, but it doesn’t entirely fulfil his considerable promise.
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Afterglow
It’s unclear if Alex G ever found a god to save the animals (maybe because he didn’t spend enough time searching, either for God or for animals), but he did find something he could believe in: love. He ends the album on a cathartic cry to forgive, to choose to embrace today. And on a record that finds solace in places he used to run from, it’s clear he ultimately did.
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Clash Magazine
‘God Bless the Animals’ has Alex G on home turf with his sleepy but sweet acoustic guitar-driven tracks, as well as a good helping of lo-fi textures, catchy piano licks and some of his strongest vocal performances to date. Though despite the high fidelity of much of the project, it doesn’t stop Alex from experimenting with AutoTune and stranger sounds. So while the singles may be his most commercially appealing to date, he never once loses integrity or his aural signature as an artist.
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The Firenote
Alex G continues to evolve before your ears on God Save The Animals. He is completely willing to color outside the lines. For some artists, it can be a balancing act not to lose your core when changing the formula. Alex G perfectly walks the line and not only gives longtime fans an album they will adore but should easily build his growing fanbase with the smartly played God Save The Animals.
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West Side Wired
Although I have really enjoyed the past work of Alex G, this album was very underwhelming. Many of the songs sounded very similar and there were few songs I would want to listen to again. Nevertheless, one high point of the album was the unique outros that were the highlight of nearly every song. If you enjoy listening to grunge, steampunk music that is different from Alex G’s past albums, “God Save the Animals” may be for you.
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Northern Transmissions
God Save The Animals is full of these moments. You hear what Giannascoli is saying but there is something in his delivery or it’s musical accompaniment that makes you question if the meaning is accurate. It’s not often we get treated to an album that is so interesting in its voice and textures, that allows you to explore its messages and meanings all the while just plain enjoying it. At nine albums in, it sounds like Giannascoli is just getting started.
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Commedia
Alex G has evolved significantly since when he first started making music. His music style is very versatile, so individuals with various tastes in music would appreciate listening to him.
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Range
Not 10 years ago, bedroom pop was significantly easier to box into a preconceived classification. Whether that was out of necessity, or creative vision is no longer relevant. Alex G has played a vital role in expanding those limits, and God Save The Animals is another kaleidoscopic treasure of auteur pop to add to his resume.
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The Equinox
While Alex has clearly grown as an artist since the days of songs like “Sarah” or “Gnaw”, he still has a long way to go before perfecting an album like “God Save The Animals.” While this album has its rough patches, notably with “Mission”, many stand-out tracks show that Alex is not even close to being done after over 10 years in the alternative scene.
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Stereoboard
There’s maximalism and minimalism here in equal measure, from acoustic numbers to sweeping, pixelated drones. Everything about ‘God Saves The Animals’ feels perfectly balanced and reinforces the fact that Alex G is a master of melody, no matter the range of sounds that he’s working with.
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Hotpress
God Save The Animals brings attention to everything - from youth to a generalised sense of faith that keeps the narrator going, to the question of having a family and putting cocaine in the vaccine to gain immunity, Giannascoli sweeps across a plethora of emotions in a mere 40 minutes. This album feels like a mystery gift box, full of odd story lines that are meant to be deconstructed and interpreted in vastly different ways. It is without a doubt the most hopeful, positive album in the Alex G universe, and proves to us that maybe it's time to have a little more faith ourselves.
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The Skinny
God Save the Animals is Alex G's most sonically consistent record, managing to turn the darkness into light on the turn of a devastating key change.
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Under the Radar Magazine
Like a scarecrow with a synthesizer, God Save the Animals is subsumed by domestic instruments and techniques, yet unafraid to press down on a touch-pad to emit a digital “RUFF! RUFF!” to avoid trite and protect those private, homegrown roots. It is through his multiple album methodology of letting the music speak for yourself where, I think, the incredible fan fondness mutates, as the askewed can easily be realigned and bent to support any and all perspectives. But now the allusive songwriting of impartial scenarios has expanded into more general, theoretic axioms of drudging through the mud to get where we we’re meant to be, even if it’s unwillingly. Biographical or not, if there is anything to garner, it is some new, spiritual Alex G Truisms that read like so: breathe, relax, unclench your jaw, and enjoy the ride.
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DIY Magazine
An album that encapsulates his weird and beautiful world.
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Flood Magazine
Alex Giannascoli’s latest has a density to its proceedings that his previous albums lack—all while maintaining the quirk and intimacy of the bedsit recording proposition of his project’s origin.
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The Chronicle
Even with this glistening new addition to his discography, I still don’t trust Alex G. However, I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that at least for now he has maintained his status as one of the most genre-defining, self-assured musicians of his generation. And if my unfounded gut feeling somehow proves accurate, and Alex G really is destined to fall someday, then I think we all owe it to ourselves to appreciate the heights he’s reached right now.
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Dork
‘God Save The Animals’ brings a stunning display of vulnerability which will have you hooked from the offset. Alex G may be nine albums in, but his work remains every bit as captivating. ‘God Save The Animals’ is an album with beauty and humility at its very core, bringing a comforting and compelling outlook on the human experience at a time humanity seems to need it more than ever.
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The Line of Best Fit
Though it feels glued together by the seams, God Save The Animals, like the best Alex G efforts, eventually reveals an almost impossible cohesiveness – a slightly off-kilter haze where a smouldering heart shines for others to lean into. While Alex G has never been the most personal songwriter, his vague but heartfelt sentiments, this time of faith, have miraculously injected hope and familiarity into the veins of younger millennials toeing the line of Gen Z. These are his people, and he's yet to fail in finding them.
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Buzz Magazine
God Save The Animals just doesn’t hang together stylistically as Giannaloski swerves between Nirvana-type noisemaking, Beck-like beats and modern, messy indie grooves. An album that may have an impact onstage, where the songs can settle into something substantial and connect with an audience.
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Sputnik Music
It's a bracing statement that hopefully signals a future even more bold and confident than what we've seen thus far. The full-bodied successes of God Save The Animals sometimes give way to moments of gun-shy reticence; while an artist as inquisitive and meticulous as Alex G doesn't need to go for the jugular, he could also learn when not to pull his punches. This one isn't quite the knockout, but it still more than goes the distance.
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The Needle Drop
A really solid set of tunes from Alex G.
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AllMusic
After drawing focus to production sometimes at the expense of the rest, the often suffocating 13-track set cracks open a window at the end with the pairing of the rickety "Miracles" and "Forgive," an anguished, ruminative folk-rock jam that slowly fades out to close an album that, if challenging, successfully mixes religious motifs with a balance of tactile, earthbound textures and hypnotically dreamy, alien atmospheres.
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Mystic Sons
Alex G has always been one to crack through his own veneer and open himself up within his music, but 'God Save The Animals' goes so much further than focusing on himself. There is this beautifully relatable tone that floods his latest release, allowing the listener to get right until his skin and feel his most scorched emotions.
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No Ripcord
Perhaps the album’s best example is the penultimate guitar ballad, Miracles. For all of Alex G’s success with experimentation, he’s equally at home delivering moments of earnest love. “We’ve got better pills than ecstasy / They’re miracles and crosses,” he sings. Are these religious references, or is he simply taking familiar tropes and wielding them for more universal use? That’s for you to decide.
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The Student
The album feels markedly consistent in its sound and energy; its continuity is matched by its storytelling that certainly makes it one to prioritise listening to from start to finish, something increasingly rare in a world of streaming and TikTok music. It is in this sense that Alex G both retains the best of musical traditions whilst renovating them with his eclectic musical choices, love of synths and unflinchingly vulnerable lyrics.
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Gigwise
God Save The Animals feels like Alex G's most complete work yet, fearlessly experimenting with tonal shifts and leading on powerfully spiritual lyrics, leaving listeners unsure of whether they, too, should be soul-searching after a full listen or two. Across the album’s introspective lyrics, the record feels like an ambiguous anthology of Alex’s thoughts, often dubious of what life has to offer. Yet, with a dog of his own and a history of songs named after animals across his musical discography to date, it feels a lot more reassuring that by the end of the album, Alex G is at least certain of one thing in life: God Save The Animals.
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Exclaim!
Alex G is a genius at crafting intimately familiar feelings while injecting off-kilter miscues that satisfy the oddball compulsions living in our heads. The level of restraint routinely becomes unbalanced in an instant, yet the results are more reassuring than anxiety-inducing. The overarching motif of God Save the Animals is the confessional — "I have done a couple bad things," Giannascoli repeats over and over on "Runner." Alex G makes accepting imperfection feel effortless, so let's just embrace our fate.
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FHHS Today
God Save The Animals is, again, an absolute rollercoaster of an album. It had the potential to be a fantastic album, but the overuse of autotune took that potential and curb stomped it. There are some songs that are enjoyable, but nothing to compare to Alex G’s earlier music. Alex G’s experimental approach to God Save The Animals can be appreciated to an extent, but it’s not for the casual listener.
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Zoomercore
This maturity is reflected in his sound palette as well, eschewing the lo-fi bedroom sound recording technique for an actual studio. It was a big deal when Alex changed microphones from a $90 direct-to-USB microphone to a legit one in 2017, and now Alex is even taking his instruments out of his bedroom into a physical studio. He’s growing up right before our eyes, and what he has to show for it is his best album to date, and easily one of the best albums of the year.
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Spectrum Culture
Alex G’s ninth album in the past dozen years gives its listeners bliss, a respite from an anxious world.
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Happy Valley
As with his previous records, Giannascoli wrote and demoed these songs by himself, at home; but, for the sake of both new tones and “a routine that was outside of my apartment,” he asked some half-dozen engineers to help him produce the “best” recording quality, whatever that meant. The result is an album more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette.
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