Alexander Giannascoli’s nine-album back catalogue is the record of a great creative evolution. Starting with thin, wobbly Moldy Peaches-style anti-folk in his teenage years, the Pennsylvania native added lusher, twangier elements – Americana with a slacker twist – before introducing glitched beats, pitched-up vocals and copious vocoder. By 2022’s God Save the Animals he had a zealous cult following and was pushing at the limits of what indie singer-songwriter fare could be, melding acoustic strumming and sweet melody with distortion that ranged from unsettlingly inhuman to downright demonic.
On Headlights, his 10th album, Giannascoli, 32, reins in the warp and abrasion: the sonic invention remains, but it is deployed with increased subtlety. Exceptional opener June Guitar has chipmunk backing vocals and a surging organ riff that strongly recalls Centerfold by the J Geils Band; Beam Me Up is haunted by a mid-century sci-fi sound effect and Louisiana begins with a revving engine – yet all serve the timeless, melancholic soft-rock rather than overpowering it.
It means the best bits of Headlights are not the (still highly enjoyable) off-kilter details, but the incidental shots of melody – the languid “yeah, yeah, yeah” on Beam Me Up – and the crooked love song lyrics: on the shoegazey hyperpop-punk of Bounce Boy his heart is “in braces”; on June Guitar he insists “love ain’t for the young”. The album peaks with the seemingly totally analogue Real Thing: a simply and addictively beautiful tune built around a pan flute and a witty riff on the titular romantic cliche. Giannascoli may have found a middle ground, but he’s nowhere near the middle of the road.