Alex G at the Mod Club

(Sandy) Alex G returned to Toronto at the Mod Club on Thursday, November 1^st.

This was my second time seeing Mr.G, and I was hoping for a slightly different show. To tell you the truth it was about the same.

What is the same? It’s a show with moderate energy, little to none in terms of crowd interaction, but high quality music.

Of course he is a very talented musician, along with his band. I’ve always admired his music and I can’t say there’s an album of his that I don’t like, its just his performance that is lacking. Its unfortunate because his music does tend to take a focus on emotions and life-altering experiences, and as a result (if you haven’t seen or heard about an Alex G show before) you’re kind of expecting this powerful performance to go along with it, but you get the exact opposite. It’s kind of like having flavourless food. Although it’s really good for you, there’s no salt or seasoning on it, so you can’t really taste anything.

I feel as though he needs to switch things up a bit. He’s known for his calm and quiet stage presence, but I was hoping to see some growth from that, and evidently there was not. I’m not sure if it’s a nervous thing, or a careless perspective. I really don’t know, but I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say its associated with nerves. I feel like I wasn’t the only person to return to his live show from his last Toronto show, and I probably am not the only to feel like they saw pretty much the same show from before.

With that being said, if he can’t overcome adding a bit of personality into his show, he should atleast add something to it to make it just slightly different than the one before.

At both shows he asked a couple times what the crowd wanted to hear. You hear people just screaming “Salt” at the top of their lungs, they’re just dying for it. He typically ignores that then plays another song that nobody is shouting in the crowd. Its become clear to me he’s probably never going to play that song, but it seems as though he almost just asks the question cuz he has to ask, to count it as some sort of acceptable crowd interaction.

It was really great to hear some of my favourites live such as “Mary,” “Bobby,” “Sportstar,” “Kicker,” “Bug,” “Brite Boy,” and more. I really did appreciate the performance, as did the crowd, but I was just hoping for something slightly different.