Hatchie & Alex G. at The Paradise Rock Club
by Bridget Lynch ‘24
Riding the green line over to the Paradise Rock Club on November 8th for the first sold out night of a three-show-engagement for Alex G., I found myself in a weird mix of crowds: one half Boston College students, the other late twenty-somethings in a surprising amount of fluorescent orange beanies. I shuffled into the packed room and was hit with the immediate air of joyous excitement for the first Alex G. show back in Boston since 2019.
Australian dream pop extraordinaire Hatchie joined the bill to open for this tour following the release of her latest studio album Giving the World Away earlier this year. Better known for production on other indie pop classics like Japanese Breakfast’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet and a select few Sky Ferreira tracks, Hatchie worked with grammy-nominated Jorge Elbrecht to produce this latest project. His dreamy influence is especially audible on the track “Lights On.”
Australian artist Hatchie opens for Alex G. on this latest tour (image courtesy Secretly Canadian)
In previous interviews, Hatchie had described wanting to make music that performed better for live audiences. She and Elbrecht hit the mark with this one. Hatchie played a shoegaze-y set that never wandered into boring territory and always demanded attention from the audience. The 29-year-old’s brightly toned vocals and energetic backing easily cut through the ever-present opening act murmur of the crowd. The set wound down with the markedly more relaxed 2018 hit “Sure” to close. Hatchie and her bandmates proceeded to hang around the merch tables and mingle in the crowd during the headliner.
After some lighthearted back and forth between audience members and the band regarding their respective hatred and love for his hometown of Havertown, Pennsylvania, Alex G. kicked things off with “S.D.O.S,” off his latest album, God Save the Animals, which was released in late September of this year. God Save The Animals is his 9th album, but the first recorded entirely in professional studios, marking a departure from his characteristic DIY production. The album definitely maintains the home-grown feeling that people have grown to adore, and this tour served as the live debut for the latest installation in the Alex G. musical universe.
Alex G.’s latest album, God Save The Animals, was released earlier this year (image courtesy Domino Recording Company)
A standout live track was “Hope” from 2019’s House of Sugar. The audience was eager to sing every lyric. The live version of the track featured a harsher and noisier breakdown than on the album, which made this one of the surprisingly harder tracks of the evening. It was clear from the band's enthusiasm that “Hope” had been looked at with a totally fresh approach in preparation for this tour.
The audience seemed to have plenty of rowdy fun throughout the performance. They also got crafty with song requests. Rather than shouting between tracks, dozens of people held up their phones with enlarged snapchat text on the screens begging the band to “PLAY BOBBY!” (to their disappointment and mine, this request was not heeded).
The encore was jam-packed with popular crowd favorites from early albums like DSU, Trick, and Beach Music, many of which contributed to skyrocketing Alex G. to cult status within the underground indie scene. Ending the show on a subdued, Eliott-Smith-esque note, “Change” served as the perfect backtrack for easing back outside into the cool Boston night air.
Some long since-graduated WZLY members once told me of an Alex G.-related tale which neither any station records nor any internet searches can confirm the validity of—but I’ll share it anyways. It goes something like this: in his early days, Alex G. was booked for an on-campus concert by WZLY. After the show and due to miscommunications in the booking, he realized that had nowhere to sleep in the area for the night so he ended up sleeping on the then-GM’s bedroom floor in Tower Court (and had breakfast in Tower the next morning!).
The story makes me feel a special connection to his music as I too have slept on somebody’s bedroom floor in Tower Court. Radio station urban legend? Maybe, but who knows—maybe your next galivant to Tower steps could garner a sighting of Alex G. returning for a trip down memory lane.
