Review Summary: A well-tended-to garden of an album
I first heard Lizzy McAlpine when my friend put on a playlist of her songs to soundtrack a sleepy Spring afternoon drive around the breathtaking, winding scenery of Mt. Cook in New Zealand’s South Island. Initially I passed it off as pleasant background noise for an imminent nap, but then “Doomsday” caught my ear. Immediately the song quelled my fears that McAlpine might be a TikTok-geared Phoebe Bridgers clone, through its lush, crescendoing orchestration, powerful and assured vocals, and lyrics that evoked the golden era of mid-2000s Fueled By Ramen emo.
The additional flourishes of chamber pop (and even a little bossa nova / indietronica on “Erase Me”) to the indie folk palette of
Five Seconds Flat make for a rich, polished listen. As my friend enthusiastically told me from the backseat, Lizzy is classically trained, and this is evident through both her vocal control as well her full-band production choices.
She displays a mastery in how to evolve a song over a brief runtime. Take “Called You Again” for example, which I was ready to write off as a skip, before it bloomed into a fully-realised arrangement featuring a gorgeous string section and angelically-layered call-and-response vocals. This transformation made it an album highlight, however the song ends too soon after it blossoms and you’re left wanting more time to frolic in the garden Lizzy sowed. This is a common problem on
Five Seconds Flat, which may have been better-realised as a 10 track album of 5-minute songs, than the 14x 3-4 minute tracks that it is.
Sometimes she veers a little too close to generic Lover-era Taylor Swift songwriting, such as on “Hate To Be Lame” or “All My Ghosts”. The latter’s lyrical metaphor is disappointingly juvenile considering “Ceilings” captures the same feelings of young love but in a much more poetic way. The album also peters out a little towards the end, but thankfully ends with a fantastic closer, “Orange Show Speedway”, which reveals yet another facet of her indie folk bag-of-tricks, by combining it with an earnest heartland rock cosplay.
The exciting part of Lizzy McAlpine and and
Five Seconds Flat is that she feels like the type of talented singer songwriter who could successfully veer her sound in any direction. Luckily for me, I’ve reviewed this as a part of an “
Artists completely new to me” feature, so I have several other albums to catch up on.
