It’s a hard trick to pull off what Alex G has done with Rocket. Under the moniker Sandy, Alex G has put together an album that explores and experiments creating an eclectic mix of songs that all fit under the same roof. Rocket truly shows what you can do with an album and how you can take several ideas seemingly don’t fit and put them all together with the right stitching. Rocket is an album that goes to several places, starting with warm and sweet acoustic led pop songs and growing into something aggressive, experimental and electronic. Rocket is exciting, fresh and original and demonstrates true artistry and craft; it’s almost irritating that he’s only a year or so older than myself.

Rocket starts off with ‘Poison Root’ a sweet song led by an acoustic guitar. It’s both gentle and captivating. Its simplicity makes it come across as slightly naïve, whilst harbouring brooding, moody undertones. It has tones of artists like Samantha Crain behind it, with a folky string section accompanying it. ‘Proud’ follows after with the same formula although it develops into more of a pop song by the chorus. It’s more upbeat but still has those pure, naïve undertones of the former song. It’s a pattern that sets off the album, each song borrowing from the last and developing the formula slightly. ‘Witch’ is the 5^th track in and is the end of these unfolding ideas. It’s the same formula but is darker and more twisted, as if the true intentions of the album are fully unveiled by this point. The transition here is genius, taking ideas and musical themes used earlier but turning them into something else with this song. ‘Horse’ follows and truly signals a change in the album. There’s an electronic feel to it, with a strong use of drones . Behind these there are jazzy undertones giving the song a lot of friction.

By the time ‘Brick’ happens the album is unrecognisable from the start. It’s incredibly dark and heavy, and he’s shouting in a way almost in the vein of Death Grips. It’s dark noisy and thrashing. This is the start of the album opening up, after this the tension is cut loose for more spacey and electronic influenced songs. Everything had built to the previous song and ‘Sportstar’ let’s go of all the animosity.

‘Judge’ sees another shift in styles again. It’s held together by and electronic guitar and a synthesiser. As a whole Rocket shows Alex as a true artist, it’s full of experimentation and ideas. This isn’t to suggest the album is scrappy, it isn’t. There’s clearly so much care gone into producing this album that all these eclectic ideas work resulting in an album is more than a collection of ideas. The album can be art in its own right and it allows artists to explore and take listeners on a creative journey.

Title track ‘Rocket’ sees the album leaning back towards the ideas heard in the first part of the album. It settles again. These songs however take something from the experimentation in the middle section and apply it to the simple folk inspired songs from the beginning. There’s more sense of production on these songs compared to the first few. ‘Alina’ is my favourite song off the album. It’s a great stand-alone track but, within the context of the other songs sounds all the more special and beautiful. It’s gentle and developed with a brilliant flow in the chorus. There’s a really dreamy vocal which sticks in the head along with a winding piano, the lyrics are incredibly difficult to decipher but the melodies in the vocal are, for want of a better word, lovely.

‘Big Fish’ sees the album come to a close. A sombre and gentle song that mirrors the opening track ‘Poison Root’. Although the album actually ends on ‘Guilty’ which sounds almost like an encore. It’s has jazz undertones and sounds like a free jam. It’s a song that sounds loose bordering on improvised, but is brought together by the chorus. It closes the album on a guitar playing around with the vocal melody and ends modestly but abruptly.

Overall Rocket is a truly brilliant album which shows how diverse and rich Alex G is as a songwriter. We’re not even halfway through the year yet, but I feel this album will be one of the most important releases of 2017.
Chris Middleton

Website: sandyalexg.com
Facebook: facebook.com/sandyalex
Twitter: twitter.com/sandyalexg