Alex - Girls
The best music has to grow on you. Pitchfork’s Jeremy Larson says music criticism is about “being nostalgic for things that happened ten minutes ago,” and I think he’s onto something, but it’s going to take some practice for me to reach such nostalgia that quickly. I’m suspicious of anything I like too much right away, because I can get sick of it immediately, but when it grows on me, over days or weeks, it stays with me for good. Girls’s Alex is such a track, and it’s been my favorite, hands down, since 2011, only a few months after Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the album it’s on, was released. I knew this song at first just as the one that came on after Honey Bunny, which sucked me in such that I would go, like, ten miles over the speed limit when it was playing. The contrast of this next to it makes the riffing E chords feel slower than they actually are, but if I’m being honest, the ethereal result would come through your speakers with or without that contrast.
There’s a posting of Alex on YouTube, and one of the comments describes the song as being about a crush, and I’m not sure why I never thought of that conclusion before. There are so many love songs, and that’s the vast majority of what Girls did before they split up (and did extremely well, I might add), and in my armchair opinion, from a perspective that still has so many more records to listen to, books to read and movies to watch, this is severely undervalued. The first couple lines start with “Alex has blue eyes/Well who cares?/No you don’t.” These lines are simple, but that unexpectedness cuts any hammy fuzzy love one would expect upon first listen. The impact accumulates as Owens sings the next stanzas:
If somebody somewhere cries
Well who cares? No you don't
And Alex has a band
So who cares about war?
If somebody somewhere dies
Well who cares?
No you don't…
Granted, it’s a little odd for me to try to analyze these lines as though they were written like verse poetry—the impact isn’t there without the music, the continuous tittering of cymbals and the guitars, both lead and backup, that flow and never ebb, and are just as clear to the ear and piercing to the soul as they are hazy and lazy. These chords go into a pointed, beautiful interlude, torn down by a couple more racing, slamming chords, before refraining to the rainy mood that draws you in.
This song is about more than liking someone, it’s about inventing a life together with someone in your head, and when “Alex has a boyfriend,” as Owens sings after the lines quoted above, suddenly, the entire world can go fuck itself because, in that moment, nothing in the world will ever matter again. Before we come to know that, though, we can hear increased presence of the lead guitar which wheezes and wains before giving up at the end of the piece, held up by the aforementioned structure. "Could we run away?” Owens asks. “Anywhere, anyway, only you,” he repeats, and coming out of anyone else, that would sound so corny, so cliche, so utterly ridiculous and lame, and yet here, it’s cute, it’s heartfelt and it makes me want to lightly weep not only for him, but also for all the times I’ve ever fucked up in the past, in romance or otherwise. I’ve said before that I could write a master’s thesis on this song, and this obviously isn’t quite it, but this track has always has been at the top of my anxiety-poisoned playlist overlap, because it’s as happy as it is wistful, as yearning as it is hopeful. Alex is a little long, but not overly so, and every single time I listen, I know I love her, too.