As a high school student, life can get weird. Dealing with intimate relationships, figuring out what’s socially acceptable or not, and not knowing if you should ask that girl to go to this party with you. When life delivers these awkward situations, what better way to address them than with this equally weird album.

Indie rocker Alex Giannascoli, also known as Alex G, just released his newest album, Beach Music, on October 9th.  It is one of the more remarkable sounds on an album that he’s ever released. The album’s poignant lyrics mixed with deep, superb melodies, along with Giannascoli’s influential signature lo-fi tone, add up to create an extremely good album. Songs like “Bug” and “Brite Boy” go perfectly with whatever mood you’re in, happy or sad, with uplifting melodies and dark, weird beats.  The album is an ensemble made up of music that is mostly relevant to relationship problems.

Beach Music’s first song, “Intro”, which is less than a minute long, is unlike all the other songs on the album.  It’s a scuzzy, fast paced, and almost angry sounding launch into Beach Music.  “Intro” dissuades the listener from the rest of the album that is mostly soft slower tunes that are, at the same time, gloomy and lighthearted.

“Salt” is a prime example of the happy/sad tone that dominates the album.  The positive melodies mixed with harrowing lyrics make the listener choose how they want to feel.  The indistinct lyrics of “Salt”, like the other songs, are weirdly relatable.  The strange muffled tunes in the album make his lo-fi schtick very present and clear in this album as well as the depressing and somehow merry tone.

Beach Music’s eighth song, “In Love”, is the album’s pinnacle of its lo-fi style. The fuzzy background noise complements the soft, light, almost whispery sound of the song.  The saxophone and piano featured in the song contradict each other; while the saxophone relaxes the mood and the piano sharpens it up with its high notes. The jazzy timbre, along with the occasional hushed noise of silverware clanking here and there, really sets the slow tune that actually makes you feel like you’re in a coffee house on a cold, quiet night after you found out the person you love just left you.  It may feel like that would be an awful situation that you would hate to be in, but “In Love” actually makes it seem okay and, believe it or not, pretty enjoyable.

The trippy, overall tone of the album sounds like if Radiohead’s “Creep” and Arcade Fire’s “In The Backseat” had a love child and Grizzly Bears  “Deep Sea Diver” and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” also had a love child, then the offspring of those four songs had a love child, that spawn would be Beach Music. Giannascoli’s latest album is weird in all the right ways.

Giannascoli nailed it right on the dot with this album. It makes you feel a sense of melancholy with its slower piano progressions, and a sense of enlightenment with its warped out voices going together perfectly with the melodic patterns and the wonderful acoustic progressions.  For all the listeners out there who are in the mood for an album that will make you want to sit next to a window by yourself while rain drips down or take a walk on a beautiful day with your best friends and tell stories of when you were all younger, then Alex Giannascoli’s Beach Music is perfect for you.