Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
As someone who identifies as more of a poet than a music critic, I always gravitate to an album’s lyrics before anything else. The bite-sized vignettes off House of Sugar offered some of Alex Giannascoli’s best storytelling up to that point in his career (this was before God Save The Animals entered the ring). The album has a mix of fragmented moments but also songs that more concretely touch on a range of vices, resulting in a balanced cocktail of the two.
When I was teaching poetry, I often heard my students express things like “I don’t get it,” when frustrated by a poem. This was in part due to students being forced to read sonnets written by old, dead white men—I found that when I was teaching poets who were living and breathing and writing about life today, they warmed up to the idea that poetry could be accessible. But as a teacher, I always had to stop myself from asking—does everything always need to make sense? Can’t art be a bit absurd or severed, and can’t we still find pleasure and intrigue from it? I think records can benefit from having a balance of the more narrative songs and the ones that are a bit unnerving and hard to pin down. House of Sugar offers a bit of both: songs that simmer in visceral memories of gambling at a casino or mourning a friend, and songs that are just full of noisy loops.
Back when Alex G included (Sandy) and before he was opening for The Foo Fighters, House of Sugar was released on Domino. Named after SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia (now called Rivers Casino, but still as overwhelming in only the way a casino can be), this record was released five years ago today and pulled on the same strings of its former country-inspired Rocket and synth-heavy Beach Music. I was a fan of Alex G’s earlier music (I was a tumblr kid) and his self-released songs made their rounds on my corner of the internet, but I don’t think I became a capital F “Fan” until a few years later. I liked Trick and loved Rocket, but when this album was released, I have no memory of listening to it the first time. I’m guessing it just started appearing on my Spotify and eventually fell into my rotation of albums, but the fall of 2019 wasn’t even a blur for me; it was more of a blank slate. I was in the final collapse of a year-long relationship and the beginning of a master’s program. I found myself in that strange space where you know the bar is closing and you’re holding out for last call before the lights turn on; you can suddenly see clearly, and it’s time to go the fuck home. Years later, friends would confess their first impressions of me, and she is unrecognizable. I’ve always been intense, but this was unadulterated, loud sadness. I wore it all over myself and it was present in every interaction. This depression sprang from the abrupt breakup, as well as the isolation of being in a completely new place for the first time. I was young, 23, and startled by all the endings happening around me. This sadness quickly shifted to paranoia about any new relationship—platonic or intimate—for a long time. I quickly adopted the notion that everyone was only out for themselves, which was not the best mindset while beginning a creative program.
This was also when I started reading more fairy tales. A friend of mine had gifted me a large collection of the Brothers Grimm stories, and I spiraled into the pages in order to better understand storytelling and world building. Each tale was full of warning signs of what could happen if you did not behave properly; a story rooted in reality (a marriage, a mean stepmother, overindulence) suddenly shifted into something veiled with fear. “Haunting” is the word that comes to mind when I think of House of Sugar: like much of Giannascoli’s music, he is able to muddle reality with the unrecognizable. “Gretel” takes the classic fairty tale and turns it into a song about desperate paranoia and staying on path, no matter what happens (or to whom). The first year of this record, I remember being obsessed with “Gretel” and “Walk Away” for it’s pedal-intensive loop, over the more somber “Hope,” which mentions an overdose on Hope street, and felt too familiar to the people and places I was trying to leave behind. When I hear those songs now, I’m still just as fond of them—they’re direct and incite the same reactions as the first listen.
Recently, I spent a lot of time listening to House of Sugar during a trip to Philly after driving back from a funeral in Michigan. While at a bar, I thought I saw my Big Bad Ex—it was his complete twin, down to the height, mannerisms, and style. For a split second, I was convinced it was him and I wanted to throw up. I texted some old friends about the jump scare, and one responded with how she can’t believe I still let someone take up this much space in my head. At first, I was angry and hurt by it, but then remembered she has always had the same partner since high school and recently got married. But as I thought more about it, I realized two things can be true; someone can be in a happy relationship while simultaneosuly remembering the damage from the past. Like children who are taught lessons at an impressionable age, you keep the warnings of fairy tales with you, for better or for worse. I was haunted by the memory of this person, and paranoia can be a house guest that overstays its welcome. House of Sugar shows you how something sweet on the outside can be a facade and pushes us deeper into this reality. It explores how people and places can undermine the struggle to be a good person—you can choose the path of victory and good behavior, or you can slowly erode your life and rake in all the chips on the table, just to risk it all again.
While God Save The Animals may be Alex G’s most mature work, House of Sugar felt like a preview of what was to come. Even the stranger songs have something appealing to them that’s hard to describe—“Project 2” feels abrupt and maybe out of place, but it wouldn’t feel like an Alex G record without it. “Gretel” and “Southern Sky” will always get added to a road trip playlist and fits well with a scenery of rolling hills. The record’s final, live track of “SugarHouse” fits as a sendoff to the album and warns of what happens when you keep gambling, or rather, when you keep yourself away from fully being known and letting the paranoia devour you.
The gorgeous phsycial cover of House of Sugar, like the other albums, was painted by Rachel Giannascoli. In an interview with Daniela Rodriguez and Adrian Tiu in Superstars Only, Giannascoli talked about how the cover was painted after a photograph from the siblings’ house growing up, and she made the font with puffy paint and glitter. The pink sparkles make the record feel inviting and innocent, but a little eerie, too. Constellations glimmer while the woman is mid-spin and bent back, looking up at the dark sky. Like fairy tales, House of Sugar offers a story of caution and what can happen if vices get the best of you. So, in the spirit of Friday the 13th and autumn around the corner, give House of Sugar another visit, avoid black cats, and indulge in the sticky sweetness of another world.
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Ryleigh Wann | @wannderfullll
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