A Few Years Too Late: House of Sugar (2019)
I don’t like using the word experimental to describe music. It often means “I’ve never heard this particular brand of eschewing musical norms,” and is used to ease the difficulty of nicely saying that an album lacks polish. Alex G’s House of Sugar is not experimental, but rather it is a fully realized product of some bold past experimentation. Simple melodies are contrasted with Alex G’s signature hypnotic verses to invoke the feeling of standing still while the world moves around you. This dizzying momentum is the lens through which G presents the album’s central theme, addiction.
Themes
Walk Away opens the album with a drawn-out, distorted “Someday I’m gonna walk away from you,” over Alex’s guitar. The only other lyrics in the song are “not today, not today”. These two verses are constantly pushing back and forth, fighting for dominance. Matching the lyrics is a struggle between Alex’s guitar and the almost-trancelike melody.
Conflict between G’s guitar and, well, everything else continues through almost every song on the album. He almost breaks free again in the catchy, upbeat verses of Gretel but is pulled back by an almost oppressive string section. I say almost because although they start aggressively, they gradually shift into something comforting and inviting. However that change is short-lived as G doubles down on his momentum shifting in Near, which uses repeated vocals to evoke an almost strobe-like effect. I can only describe it as the feeling of watching a movie in slow motion AND with every other frame removed.
Catharsis finally comes in In My Arms. It’s in this song that G allows himself to embrace the discord that has been haunting him. Instead of fighting it, he moves with it, allowing it to pull him in and out like a wave. If Sugar is the pain of addiction, then In My Arms is a moment of self-forgiveness. It is a peaceful moment in a difficult time, and works as a beautiful turning point for the whole album, after which the three remaining songs are markedly more subdued than the early tracks.
Almost Perfect
House of Sugar is not without its missteps. The album version of Bad Man is inexplicably worse than this version released online in January. Actually it’s pretty explicable; the album version is sung with a faux-western drawl. The song featured in the official video ditches the distracting vocal effects and replaces the synths with live piano and strings, resulting in a more tender, personal song. Sugar’s tone is very similar to the sound my anxiety makes when it tells me something terrible is about to happen and it’s my fault. Surprisingly, this works on its own, but it’s jarring sandwiched between two softer songs (Bad Man & In My Arms). However these moments don’t distract too much from the balance between Alex G’s bedroom rock roots and new MGMT-esque style.
Verdict
Some notes on my wacky made-up metrics. Strength of Concept does not just describe the writing, but how well the writing and music work together to evoke the narrative. Musical Execution is extremely subjective but it feels important to include whether I actually like the songs here. Context is a way for me to rank this album against Alex G’s other work. In this case House of Sugar is second only to his fantastic debut album, 2010’s Race. And finally replayability is a metric that might only matter to me, but describes how much I keep coming back to this album. The fact that I’m writing this review in 2021 should explain why that score is important to me.
It’s also worth noting that I basically made these metrics up on the spot and they’re very likely to change in future reviews.
Final Thoughts
Built on a strong musical foundation and intimate themes, House of Sugar is a fantastic ninth (NINTH!) studio album from Alex G. Despite some small hiccups, there is a strong narrative that flows cohesively from beginning to end, making it one of my top concept albums in recent memory.
Top track: Hope