Tonight doesn’t get off to the best start. ‘Judge’ from the latest album Rocket, is an odd choice to kick things off and feels like it’s slightly misplaced. It doesn’t manage to hit the audience right or stir up much excitement in the room. One thing I really enjoyed about Rocket was the fact that the songs felt like they all needed each other to sound as effective. Played separately, they may not leave the same mark on the audience. These clouds clear quickly though and once Alex G finds his feet the live show makes sense.

Despite a shaky opener and a few crowd doubts, by the time it comes to ‘Proud’ everyone’s on board. It’s a song that can make any cold listener feel warm. His voice is a joy to listen to as well. It sounds sweet and humble, like a mature man embracing naivety. There are a few sound issues but that seems to be down to my positioning in the room more than anything. It’s at this point where the roughness feels right and doubts are forgotten. Patterns is sold to capacity, there is no room to fidget, even check the time. The crowd is locked in tonight and the room becomes a furnace and a cluster of clutched coats and tied jumpers.

Things fully click into place at ‘Poison Root’, which is where the experimenting starts to work and everything starts to align. The vision of the live show is clear at this point and live they really play around with the song, in this scenario they throw drum solos over the song which makes it the obvious way to lead into ‘Brick’. They build all this tension via the use of backing tracks and, from what it sounds like, they use a double kick over a recorded double kick, making a quadruple kick. It’s moments like this where you see Alex G’s love for experimenting, it comes across like he’s still messing around with his already released music and likes to use live shows to try some new chops.

He then ends the main set on keyboard, which from where I’m standing makes him barely visible at all. ‘Guilty’ closes the main portion of the set and, like the album, it serves as a perfect closer to cap off the set that’s been dominated by songs from Rocket. The majority of his songs sound reworked live. He messes around with sounds where he would be missing string players for instance and, although there’s nothing totally out there in the mix (although at points there is), it makes the live show stand on its own two feet.

Alex G clearly has a lot of love for his audience and he makes it clear that he’s here for them as much as they are here for him. He adjusts the lighting of the room to make it better onstage and for the audience which I have to say was a relief. His set does consist heavily from the new album but, once the main set is finished, he checks how much longer he has till curfew and tries to stretch it thin. He leans into the crowd and asks what they want to hear and tries to fulfil the majority of requests. It just goes to show how much of a giving performer he is. He tries to make his live show something different from his records and although it can be hit and miss, it’s something that I love to see from a live show and something I welcome from any artist.

Chris Middleton

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