The minute I saw that Alex G was included in the credits for Frank Ocean’s long-anticipated Endless, my heart sank a little bit. The feeling had nothing to do with Alex’s involvement in the album but rather with my own personal failure. On April 8th of this year (cue Neutral Milk Hotel song), my best friend Meredith Brady and I had the opportunity to interview Alex for a music blog we’ve been meaning to get running since January. Seeing all the recent hype about Alex made me wish that I had something to show for the time I spent getting to know him. I waited for months for the right moment to write about that hour spent in a Grinnell College coffee shop. “I’ll wait until my writing improves a little bit.” “I’ll wait until I’m more professional.” “I’ll wait until we have a better website up.” “I’ll wait until . . . . ” You get the gist. I am just now realizing there is no “perfect time” to share my experience and there is no right way to write this article. I am no music journalist. I am an awkward eighteen year old girl who loves music in general, has listened to DSU about 40 times this week alone, loves people, and found a way to combine the three. There are plenty of fabulous articles detailing Alex’s history, discography, and thoughts on his music. This is not one of them. This is what a casual coffee date with Alex G is like – astrology, orange juice, and everything in between.

Around 5 p.m. on that windy April afternoon, Meredith and I shook hands with Alex in that little cafe and sat down at a little corner booth covered in graffiti. I’d met Alex and his band (all such nice people – when I arrived in Grinnell I was immediately greeted with a hug by Scotty) three nights prior at his show at the Slowdown in Omaha, but I was ecstatic to get to have a conversation longer than five minutes. We sat down, I fumbled with the cassette deck I used to record the interview, and cracked open my tiny yellow Moleskine with nearly illegible questions scribbled all over the pages. I could hear Porches doing their soundcheck in the background and there was a group of vegans watching a movie on the couches across the room. Unfortunately the first few minutes of the interview were lost to a faulty thrift-store tape, but once we switched it out we were good to go. I’ll include the full audio to the interview at the end of the article, but here I’ll share with you some of my favorite things I learned about Alex over the course of the hour.

BD (bedroom demise): What’s your sign?

A (Alex G): Aquarius.

BD: What do you think of the good old Midwest?

A: It’s cool. Like, I don’t have a lot to say about any of the places we’re at, really, because we just see the venues and most of the people we talk to are nice because they’re coming to see music and shit so they already are predisposed to like us. I don’t really get an authentic feel to each area. I think my favorite spot is the Southwest – New Mexico . . . I just like the sun. Just dry, it seems like so oppressive but it’s cool.

BD: Pulp or no pulp?

A: I like either one. I don’t know, if I’m buying it from the store … dude, I’d take either one. I guess when I’m buying it from the store I like no pulp.

(We went on to debate about orange juice for longer than I’d like to admit. If you want to know, he’s a smooth peanut butter person, too.)

BD: What’s the shittiest book you’ve ever read?

A: I don’t know, I don’t want to shit on any book, books are awesome.

BD: Okay, what’s a good book you’ve read recently?

A: I read this book called Blood Meridian, that was really good. And this other one – everybody knows Grapes of Wrath. I didn’t get assigned that in high school . . . School makes books suck. Because that book is fucking awesome and if I read that for school I probably would have hated it.

Story time. My pal Nate and I showed up to the Slowdown show really early to meet up with Alex to set a time and place for this interview, and for a while it was only us and all of the bands at the venue before people started rolling in. Along comes one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, multi-talented Justin Blackburn, and instantly made Nate and I feel comfortable and welcome. He even gave me a few questions to ask Alex, who smiled and had wonderful things to say just at the mention of Justin’s name. Here’s my favorite, despite not having any idea what Alex meant by his answer. I don’t think he does either.

BD/Justin: What’s your favorite non-physical dimension?

Alex: Probably #4.

Insert very long conversation about non-physical/physical dimensions, the law of attraction, Abraham Hicks, and personal reality that made my brain hurt a little bit. This was by far my favorite part of the conversation.

“OH, THAT’S THAT SHIT? THAT’S FUCKING DEEP, DUDE.” – Alex on the law of attraction

BD: What’s your bracelet say?

A: Princess.

BD: How did your part on ‘Possession (full)’ from An Abundance of Strawberries [Julia Brown] come about? Did Sam [Ray] ask you to do that?

A: Wait, what is that? I don’t know if I did that. What are you talking about?

BD: I’m pretty sure you did.

A: Me and him were talking a while ago . . . I hit him up because I had a dream that he wrote a song and it went like, “blue skies, blue rain”, and then I recorded it . . .

(I had to play the part for him.)

**

A: I sent that to him, we were talking a while ago and I had hit him up because I had had a dream that I was listening to his music, like I was in a field and I heard that song play. The song was a lot longer, there was all this weird guitar stuff, and the chorus was that and that’s what I played because that’s the only part I remembered, but I guess he just stuck it on his album, which is cool.

BD: Do you have any collabs in the making? Splits or anything?

A: No, not that I can think of. I don’t really like collaborating that much.

After some more chat about Abraham Hicks and the Law of Attraction, I showed him my “NEW” stick and poke tattoo on the inside of my elbow, which was inspired by my favorite song off Alex’s album Rules.

BD: Do you have any stick and pokes at all?

A: I have like four. I have one here (proceeds to point out one in a spot I can’t remember) and on my thighs and on my butt.

And that was pretty much the end of it. Listening back on this interview, I can now see there really wasn’t any other way I could have presented this. My time spent with Alex was so relaxed, full of yelling and laughter and weird ass ideas, that an article drenched in formality would have been inappropriate and awkward. I spent the rest of the night screaming out lyrics during the show and banging my head so heard that I had a massive headache the next morning – I have a countdown on my phone until I get to go to two more of his shows this fall in Madison and Chicago.

I hope everyone has the chance to talk to Alex personally some day as I did – he’s an incredibly genuine and funny guy (and puts on one hell of a show). This was the first time I’d gotten the opportunity to talk with a musician I admire one-on-one, and it gave me the confidence and drive to want to do so again and again. Music journalism doesn’t always have to consist of picking apart a song until you’ve stripped all the joy and spontaneity that comes with listening to music. How can you know music without getting to know the little things about the person who created it? If there’s anything to take away from this article, just remember – someone can play guitar on a Frank Ocean album and wear a bracelet that says Princess, too.

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Listen to the full interview here: https://clyp.it/xajmw2f4

Listen to Alex G’s music here: sandy.bandcamp.com

Special thanks to those who organize the Grinnell College concerts for making this possible and allowing us to use a wonderful space to conduct the interview. I cannot thank you enough for that night.