By Wolfie Tyler-Kim
Popular indie/lofi/slacker rock artist “Sandy” Alex G made his stop at The Fillmore this past October on his tour for his new album “God Save the Animals” and it was definitely a show to remember.
Last month on October 19th 2022, me and a few of my friends took the drive from UC Santa Cruz to the San Francisco Bay Area to see the one and only Alex G at the Fillmore. The friends that I was with in this car were pretty big Alex G fans while I have only listened to a handful of his songs before. So from my small sample size of Alex G that I had experienced I was expecting a pretty chill and relaxed concert experience like other indie shows I have seen in the past. Boy was I in for a surprise.
Once we all arrive in SF and finally find some parking we see the massive line outside the Fillmore that went on for ages it seemed like. The doors opened already around 30 to 40 minutes beforehand so I thought the line wouldn’t be too bad. Once we were in line though it moved along pretty quickly. Once we walked up the stairs in the Fillmore and got as close to the stage as possible, the opening act immediately came on stage and started performing as soon as we got there. The opening artist was the solo artist “Hatchie,” who I had never heard of before. Her voice was really good, but the fact that there was no drummer and the band just used a drumming track to replace the drums really took away from the performance as a whole.
After Hatchie’s performance was done, the one and only Alex G came on stage and the crowd went absolutely ballistic, and I am not understating that at all. The crowd was possibly one of the most energetic and hyper crowd I have ever seen in person. Like I said, once he came on stage people were screaming and freaking out as loud as they possibly could from all around. Once he actually started playing songs, people were screaming the lyrics like they were at a death metal concert, some people were on the verge of tears they were so excited to see him. For those of you that don’t know, Alex G is typically known for as my mom put it “mellow sounding music.” So this sharp contrast of behavior from his fans versus his musics shocked me to say the least. It was very funny seeing hundreds of Alex G fans around me screaming the lyrics and moshing to mellow indie music as I’m just standing there listening to the music and trying to survive the 2 moshes that opened up in between me. Overall the crowd was one for the ages and surprised me in the best way possible.
Alex G’s performance itself was really great. I didn’t know a single song but his bands performance was really good and his voice sounded even better live than it did on the recordings, which is not something you can about every artist. Alex G also surprised me with the energy that he brought to each song and how much passion you could see in his face during each song no matter how mellow or upbeat it was. He also did some covers of some rock songs that I unfortunately can’t remember the names of. One thing that he did that I thought was really cool was that during each guitar solo, Alex G would turn his back from the audience to I think put a spotlight on his guitarist that was doing the solo. I also liked how he told the crowd that they were doing one more song then having a super secret encore afterwards. The encore was quite long and was probably around 5-7 songs long. The last song that Alex G performed was to honor a fellow SF band in “Third Eye Blind” and played Semi-Charmed Life. If you don’t recognize the song title, you probably have heard the song before, a great and fun choice to end the show.
Overall this Alex G show at The Fillmore was a great show and I’d definitely endorse the idea of getting Alex G tickets if you are ever thinking of getting some.