What I'm Hearing: Alex G, Best Songs About Summer, and The New Billy Joel Doc (That I'm In!)

Plus: An Important Procedural Question For You All

Hello friends! I’m about to hop on a plane to London for a weeklong vacation. Hoping to connect with my pals Noel and Liam Gallagher when I’m there, I’ll let you know how it goes.

The big new album of the week in my world is Headlights, the 10th LP by Alex G. I’ve been listening to Alex for a decade, but it’s still a little weird to think about him as a foundational artist of modern indie. That’s partly due to his age (he’s only 32, a kid!) as well as my own. When I heard records like DSU and Beach Music in the mid-2010s, I was in my mid-30s and writing about Alex’s cohort from what I call “the Bandcamp Generation.” These were the artists, mostly in their teens and early 20s, who came up recording their songs on their own as they were learning how to write, and building audiences on the internet rather than the old-fashioned way of IRL touring. At that time, I thought Alex was a good songwriter, but I put my money on Car Seat Headrest or Jay Som to have bigger careers.

I was obviously wrong about that: Headlights is Alex’s debut with RCA, and it pulls off the tricky maneuver of staying true to his sound while also sounding relatively “straight” and accessible, especially compared with the experiments of recent albums like House Of Sugar and God Bless The Animals. (This is typified by the excellent “Afterlife,” my favorite song of 2025 so far.) In my Uproxx column this week, I reached out to Eli Enis, a very good critic who writes the essential Chasing Sundays newsletter. He’s also an Alex G super fan, and he articulated Alex’s importance to indie fans of Eli’s generation.

There were plenty of other artists who were messing around with GarageBand and making interesting cocktails of bedroom pop and lo-fi pop, but no one was able to elevate the way that Alex was. The way he’s grown with the way music has grown — in some ways leading it, but in other ways following the trajectory of how music has sounded over the last 10 years — is so important. I mean, he was featured on Frank Ocean’s Blonde, and he was already making music that sounded like that. It sounded natural for him to be on that record.

I also wrote a fun piece on my favorite songs about summer. As I delineate in the piece, songs about summer aren’t necessarily the same as songs of the summer. I wrote about 40 of them, and it only took about seven minutes for someone to point out two tracks that I didn’t include that I really wish I had: “Nightswimming” by R.E.M. and “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. JFC, how did I miss those?

Here’s what I wrote about my top pick:

The only choice. Even Chris Rock would agree that this is the best song about summer. Back in the ’90s, Will Smith was just a chill, likeable guy who wanted to give the world a “soft subtle mix.” (He also took a decisive stance against “hardcore dance,” which must have upset Ian Mackaye.) Like a lot of songs on this list, “Summertime” is rooted in nostalgia, but it’s more sweet than sad. Will and Jeff are here to celebrate all the best parts about summer. The lyrics are incredibly thorough in that regard. All the activities I mentioned at the start of the column — except surfing and, of course, seasonal depression — are accounted for. Factor in the excellent sample of Kool & The Gang’s “Summer Madness” and you have a perfect song about summer that is impossible not to love.

Over on Indiecast, I recommended the new album by Andy Boay, whose name you might know from the fine psych-rock band Tonstartssbandht. Their most recent album Petunia ended up on my year-end list for 2021, and I still listen to the utterly beguiling “What Has Happened” fairly regularly. Boay has a talent for stacking multi-track vocals in a manner that recalls the spookiest Beach Boys songs, and that carries over to his solo LP, You Took That Walk For The Two Of Us. (Buy/stream here.)

Last Friday the first part of the new Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes debuted on HBO Max, and it has to be the most thorough rock doc to arrive in some time. Part one on its own is nearly two and a half hours, and part two presumably is about as long. I say “presumably” because I haven’t seen that part yet. But I can only assume it’s just as absorbing as the first part. Billy Joel has long had a checkered critical reputation, but even if you think the guy is a soft-rock wimp, he’s had a really interesting life, as the doc wastes no time demonstrating. You’re barely settling in before there are multiple suicide attempts and an affair with Billy’s best friend’s wife and record-label malfeasance and so on and on.

Have I mentioned that I’m in the movie? I’m in the movie! You can see me in part one making the first ever reference to the band Suicide in the context of Billy Joel. Seriously! I’m pretty proud of that!

Me on my dirty laptop screen

I’ve appeared as a talking head in other docs (including ones I helped to make), and it’s always fun. The Billy Joel doc was an especially luxe experience. They flew me out to Manhattan in March of 2023 (docs take a long time to get made!) and put me up in one of the nicer hotel rooms I’ve stayed in. It was right next to the Beacon Theater, which is where the interview took place. My Q&A was conducted by the co-director Susan Lacy, who for years made about a million American Masters docs, including the Bob Dylan movie No Direction Home that was eventually taken over by Martin Scorsese. I loved being able to talk to such an accomplished filmmaker and pick her brain a bit on the business.

Anyway, see the movie. It’s good!

One last thing: I recently asked via a note about whether you (my people, my readers) prefer to see a review published before an album comes out or after. A lot of people said “both,” and while I appreciate the enthusiasm this isn’t exactly helpful. I’m asking because I’m honestly trying to figure out when its best to run a review. I normally aim for before the release, because I have that fear of my thing getting lost in the shuffle of all the other things written. But maybe that fear is … unfounded? Anyway, I’d really appreciate your feedback on this. Thanks!