Alex G

I don't know much about any religions, but from talking to people who are religious, loving yourself because God made you... there's a purpose for you to be here. You deserve love innately because of that. It's not a matter of what you did or who you are, it's just because you're a person, you deserve to be loved.

I'm done with school. I was there because I figured I wanted to make a lot of money or something, but I sucked at discipline. I sucked at doing what you have to do.

I have like, a feeling and I make music to match this thing, this feeling. It's extreme. It's like, not being able to deal with the way reality is.

I work hard to not talk a mile a minute.

I wouldn't think about the career side of it too hard, I would just make music because you love it. That's that. That's all I was doing.

It's hard to say why I like stuff. I guess I like things that strike me as being honest, and things not being pretentious, ya know?

It's not that I don't know about things - but a lot of what I'm doing means one thing to me at one time and means something else to me a different time. And it's hard to tell people that I feel a certain way about a song when in reality it's a whole spectrum of things that the songs can represent.

It's not so much the interview itself that I'm uncomfortable with, but the effect that interviews have on people who listen to the music. I don't think they serve the purpose of the music at all, which is to be something that someone can have a personal attachment with. I think an interview sort of undermines that a little bit.

The only times I get uncomfortable is when people are looking into my actual life, just because, like anybody, there's tons of stuff I'd like to keep private.

I always listened to the radio a lot, and I've always tried to capture some of that stuff in my music. But it always comes across differently. I have never been able to get it right, I guess because of the limited means I had.

In life, you encounter people with different points of view and you mull them over yourself to see how it would work with your perspective. Experiences like that made me try out writing from different points of view.

A couple people close to me became religious suddenly. It's a radical change, if you're going to make that leap of faith.

That's how I listen to music. When I was younger, I had Modest Mouse, then Elliott Smith, then Radiohead, one at a time - like, 'I'm obsessed with you.'... It feels like they're your friend.

I'm confident in Philly. I know where I'm at, and I don't feel the need to escape anything.

When I was younger, when I first figured out how to work GarageBand and worked out a system of how to record myself, I was nonstop. I'd get home from school or work and just be nonstop recording because it was just so fun and satisfying.

I often send my songs to my friend Emily Yacina who will add harmonies, but other than that I do everything myself. That's definitely my preferred way to work. I think I'm a control freak. I get hyper-focused and when someone offers advice - even if it's really good advice - I talk myself out of whatever they say.

In maybe third grade, I kept asking my parents for piano lessons, and eventually I got them. It turned out I wasn't quite disciplined enough for piano lessons.

I remember writing really simple songs on the piano when I was really young. Looking back, I'd play a lot of two-note minor chords and call it the 'bad guy' song and then a bunch of major chords would be the 'good guy' song.

Everything that I do, and everything that everyone does - you're just gobbling up everything around you. Everyone's selfish - whatever you can take you take, pretty much.

I completely understand why I am considered a singer-songwriter and I have no problem with any of that. It's just when I'm thinking of myself making music, I think of myself more as a producer.

When I'm thinking of a song, it's not like, 'This would be a great 'me' song.' I'm just like, 'This would be a cool song.'

I am beyond a control freak - I'm a monster. I say it straight up to my band sometimes, because I'll have them play on some of the songs, and sometimes I'm like, 'Honestly you could play something so amazing and I might not like it just because I didn't do it.'

My intention is to make something that you can listen to a hundred times.

I try and construct the music in a way that stuff that doesn't make sense on the first listen will make sense on like the fifth listen. And then there's other stuff that will make more sense that you didn't hear before on the next listen.

You know who I love? Donna Tartt.

I know what a good sentence looks like. I read a lot, so I know what reads well.

If it doesn't happen in the studio, if the magic doesn't happen then, you're paying for that time and you have to go back the next time, whereas at home, I can sit there all day until some magic happens.

I think that before I signed to Domino, I was a little more like, 'I gotta do it all,' because I'm trying to get paid, or something. Now I feel a little more secure. Maybe I'm less pretentious now. Maybe I'm more pretentious. I don't know.

I just couldn't make myself care about school.

I'm always trying to keep myself entertained while making music. Because that's just my only gauge of the quality of it.

There's something to be said about making music that has just some pure element that can communicate with everyone. I like when stuff is so earnest, because... how do I explain it? The person making the music then becomes a part of the art.

I'm always trying to come to terms with the fact that people could stop buying my records and coming to the shows tomorrow, and I'd have to figure something else out.

I sort of assume everyone has ulterior motives. People aren't necessarily like that, but I'm a paranoid person.

I'm not even that good at guitar, so when it sounds like I'm playing a chord in a raw or unconventional way, it's not because I'm like, Oh this needs an unconventional chord.

Studios are awesome, but at home, if I have an idea, I can just run over, hit record, and put it down real quick. In the studio, you have to save it.

I guess the hope is that people will like me or something.

Even if I wasn't doing music as a career, I'd probably still get a lot out of it and want to make it all the time. So it's sort of hijacked any other path that I was on, you know, because I've just spent all my free time doing music instead of pursuing stuff that would actually help me.

I used to just send the music to my friends and I wouldn't put a name on it, and then they would label it as Alex G. That was just what everybody called me, because there was another Alex or something, and it would be on Last.fm or whatever like 'Alex G.'

Yeah, I think good writers have a lot of discipline and I don't have that in me.

Being a little kid, I'd sit at whatever instrument, and I always preffered making stuff up as opposed to learning other people's stuff.

If I'm making a chord progression on guitar, and I like it, but the next day when I play, and it doesn't make me feel anything, I just scratch it, or I'll rework it till I have this thing that's consistently putting me in a spot, you know? It's not a method that I'm even conscious of.

All of my songs are trial-and-error until each part is successfully hitting me in the way that I can feel. But I don't have some type of meter that I can put on my brain to see if it's hitting me properly; it's a loose, intuitive process.

I don't think I dream more than the average person, but I appreciate them a lot, as everyone does.

DSU' and the ones prior, the music was concretely my escape from everything else, and on 'Beach Music' onwards, it's still an escape, but there's now this context where it's now my 'craft' for real. It's representing me in a deeper way than I perceived it before.

I never intended for my family to hear my music. I don't know why.

I think I'm like most people in that there's a performance I do for everybody in my life.

I'm not sure that I think about it often, but I know I try and make music that is especially moving to me, and so it's probably inevitable that I'll draw from my past and use sounds that I know will kind of evoke some kind of thing in my brain.

I write whether or not I'm planning to put it on the album.

None of my family members are particularly musical except for my older brother. He has Asperger's and perfect pitch.

When I was younger, the music that made sense to me the most was Modest Mouse.