Alex G, 'Runner'

There are two faces to summer: the ideal and the real. The first is saturated with possibility — reprieves from quotidian duties, longer days and looser inhibitions. The second is suffused with heaviness, rising temperatures and climate anxiety. As far as summer songs go, Alex G's "Runner" wears both faces at once. It's a track that is as light as it is ominous, packed with the polished flourishes of a happy tune and simultaneously replete with disruptive stuff that spills over. Among piano chords, murmurs and a single wail, Alex G gives us an unlikely summer anthem that reveals the seedy underbelly of the idyllic season.

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