Bachelorette's new L.P. "My Electric Family" is out now on Drag City Records, Mistletone and Particle Tracks ....................................................................
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Bachelorette, "My Electric Family" (Drag City) Reviewed by Jake O'Connell, U.S. Associated Press................................................................................
Annabel Alpers has put New Zealand on the tech-pop map.
Recording as Bachelorette, her first album for the Drag City label is a pop treatise on technology's perpetual intrusion on society.
Titled "My Electric Family," the record takes aim at an increasingly computer-reliant population. Her method is the catch. As a student of computer-based composition, Bachelorette makes use of traditional instruments, but deploys mostly electronic sounds. Like Kraftwerk's "Computer World," she uses the very devices she's critiquing.
The hazy doo-wop of "The National Grid" explores the urban existence; backing vocals inch the rhythm along, giving the feeling of walking on a crowded sidewalk. The brass section by the Royal New Zealand Air Force Brass Band on "Dream Sequence" plays like a sound-off for more physical activity.
Disconsolate ballad "Where to Begin" poses the question, "Will this digital obsession ever end?" Again, Alpers' lyrics articulately punctuate the situation: "You stay in your room/ On the computer/ Observing strangers/ Ignoring those around you."
"Her Rotating Head" is synth-pop on par with other outer-echelon divas like Annie (Norway) and Robyn (Sweden), but instead of a bubble gum theme, Alpers subliminally rails against objectification by likening the female side of a romance to a robotic doll.
Using pop music as a vehicle for introspection, Bachelorette details the benefit and detriment of technological evolution, making one of the year's best records in the process.
CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "Technology Boy," the album's centerpiece, veers out of the city and onto the scenic route, as processed harmonies flicker and float above warm, competing analog/digital tones........................................
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http://thedecibeltolls.com/bachelorette-my-electric-family/...........................
"Her debut for Drag City, and second proper album, has been described by a couple of writers as a sort of quirky “bedroom pop.” I wholeheartedly disagree. My Electric Family is expansive, radical, and ionospheric. Packed with reverb, sweeping moods, and surrealistic lyrical motifs, Bachelorette is way too large for any bedroom...... My Elecrtic Family is truly a hazy, dreamy, kaleidoscopic journey, packed with imaginitve strangeness and oddball beauty - a downright perfect record that serves as the surprise masterpiece of 2009...."..................
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Mindwarp - NPR Song of the Day, June 10, 2009.............................................
Bachelorette: Sounds Of Someplace Sandy...................................................
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105196273................
NPR.org, June 10, 2009 - Some songs are so evocative of summer, they practically smell like suntan lotion. The bouncy, infectious psych-disco tune "Mindwarp" — by New Zealand native Annabel Alpers, a.k.a. Bachelorette — is one of those songs. With its "Axel F"-inspired synthesizer riffs, it's the perfect soundtrack for riding in a convertible on your way to someplace sandy.
Which, of course, makes it all the more surprising to learn that the song was inspired by Jungian psychological theory. Alpers, who tinkers with all things electronic and layers multiple vocals to create haunting harmonies with herself, says she was fascinated by the notion of delving into the depths of one's psyche and hoping to come out unscathed.
The title of her new album, My Electric Family, refers to Bachelorette's relationship with technology and what it means to communicate through machines. Surprisingly, even with a heavy reliance on bits and bytes, Alpers manages to come through with songs like "Mindwarp" — organic, spontaneous and wonderfully natural.
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Pitchfork Review, Bachelorette: My Electric Family [Drag City; 2009]..................
7.5............................................................................................................
However opaque some of her ideas, Annabel Alpers is transparent when it comes to album titles. The New Zealander's last release as Bachelorette, 2008's Isolation Loops, was indeed a solo affair that, with its crackerjack melodies and lush, layered self-harmonies, made as much gorgeous electro-pop noise as any one-person project, but also erred on the side of solipsism. On that record, Alpers probed evergreen themes of loneliness and alienation via technology, peeling off lyrical barbs about vacant modern relationships (memorably in "Duet Minus One", "I went to his house/ He offered me food/ I only accepted tea/ Because it's gluten-free") in her aloof, robotic lisp. Her new LP, My Electric Family, attempts to break the self-referential loop, opening up emotionally and expanding Bachelorette's circle to include some unexpected sounds and-- perhaps more important symbolically than in fact-- other musicians.
Opener "Instructions for Insomniacs" signals this shift immediately with rhythmic, repetitive guitar strumming, Alpers' bare voice, and the unlikely strains of pedal steel. The song soon dusts itself off and climbs on the backs of a looped electronic flute figure and Alpers' multi-tracked ahs to a glorious crescendo. The new players' rootsy influences provide welcome texture to the project's typically synthetic mixes, but "Insomniacs"' slow build and kaleidoscopic explosion is already something of a Bachelorette trademark. Alpers repeats the trick on the otherwise dour, sample-cobbled track two, "The National Grid", and later by layering keyboard lines, percussion, and finally boisterous horns, on "Dream Sequence". "Her Rotating Head" is one of several songs on the record that sweats with disco fever, nostalgic, disembodied handclaps and squiggly-line analog synths included. With her cool and kittenish alto, Alpers is a credible indie-dance diva and the song's melody is memorable enough, but what makes "Head" special is its final minute's critical mass of layered vocals glinting and somersaulting through space. She may fear becoming a machine, but when Alpers folds herself into the electronic process, the results are delicious, even ecstatic.........
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Reviews of Bachelorette’s Isolation Loops
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National Radio – Nick Bollinger: “…(Isolation Loops) offers a peak into a private world in which humans invariably bring disappointment, but solace is found in electronic companions. Multi-tracking her voice to create gorgeous, thick harmonies, Alpers offers a wry take on romance, accompanying herself on a range of electronic ephemera – synthesisers, drum machines and cheesy old keyboards … “Isolation Loops” (is) a title that seems to sum up both Alpers’ themes and her largely electronic mode of delivery and it stood out to me as one of the year’s freshest local releases.”
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Sunday Star Times – Grant Smithies: “…In these lonely and primitive surroundings, Alpers has made my favourite New Zealand record of the year so far, an intensely personal album about love, loss, atomic particles and planets. She records under the suitably solitary name of Bachelorette, playing all the instruments, endlessly layering her cool clear voice with sounds from electric and acoustic guitars, banjo, bass, drums and an impressive array of el cheapo junk shop …Tender, tentative, open-hearted and frequently gorgeous, Isolation Loops sounds unlike any other album made in this country.”
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Metro Magazine - Gary Steel: “From the first note this debut is endearingly different. Bachelorette is a one-woman band consisting of Annabel Alpers, who recorded her astonishing songs of loss, longing, astronomy and physics phenomena during a long winter in a remote South Island cottage. Right from the get-go, it's clear that she's a special talent. … Alpers never lets her cleverness with a lyric or her playfully nostalgic-sounding synthesisers get in the way of the emotional core of these great songs, which ring with a certain universality while claiming a genuinely new corner of New Zealand musical iconography. On songs like "Complex History of a Dying Star", Alpers' imagination makes most songwriters seem like dullards. A brilliant album that proves isolation can be good for you."
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Real Groove Magazine, Album of the Month – Stevie Kaye: “…Quietly psychedelic, the quavery vocal harmonies, wheezy synthesisers and attic-salvaged stringed instruments are layered with a shy urgency, a breathtaking tangle of dreaminess and directness… slow oscillations between intimacy and abstraction…. Having understood the implications of technology – electricity having made us all angels, etcetera – she’s fractured herself into a girl-group of one, clouds of ah-ah-ahs and shoo-wop shoo-wops both underscoring and distracting from her tales of gravitational and hormonal pull…”
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Reviews of Bachelorette’s The End of Things EP:
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National Radio – Nick Bollinger: “…This is cunning stuff – carefully thought out and beautifully executed. Alpers is a great singer, too, and has had a lot of fun layering countless tracks of her own voice to create lush and spine-tingling harmonies. Titled “The End of Things”, Bachelorette’s debut is really an EP - just seven tracks – but there’s more sustained imagination here than you’ll find in most full-length albums. I just hope there’s more Bachelorette to come…”
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New Zealand Musician Magazine - Gareth Shute: “There is a lot more going on in this perfectly-crafted synth-pop release than your average Ladytron or Lali Puna track… Overall this is a simply amazing debut.”
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Sunday Star Times - Grant Smithies: “The End of Things is the first solo EP by Annabel "Bachelorette" Alpers, and my only problem with it is it is too short… It is indeed a most miraculous sound, slightly krautrock-ish but warmer, friendlier…”
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Dominion Post - Lindsay Davis: “There's an alluring dreamlike quality to the quirky songs of Auckland's Bachelorette… As a debut, this seven track EP will leave you wanting more.”
