Bachelorette
Bachelorette
Release Date: May 17, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Indie Electronic, Indie Pop
Record label: Drag City
Music Critic Score
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Album Review: Bachelorette by Bachelorette
Very Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Though this is Bachelorette's fourth album, this set of songs is such a statement of purpose that it deserves to be the project’s namesake. With Annabel Alpers' fondness for folk and synth pop, the genres have never blended together so seamlessly before, as on “The Light Seekers,” which marries acoustic picking with electronic beats so delicate they feel more like heartbeats than man-made rhythms. There’s also a newfound emotional maturity at work, most strikingly on the opening track, “Grow Old with Me,” where Alpers sings “you can watch my face disintegrate” over nearly hymnal electronic textures and backing vocals.
Based on rating 7/10
Bachelorette—which is essentially the one woman show of Annabel Alpers—has had something of a passable career mining folksy electro-pop, seeing as Alpers’s latest release is her third proper album under the moniker, and not too many artists get to their third album, after all. However, it could be that this is the end of Bachelorette, as the final song on this self-titled LP, entitled “Not Entertainment”, could be considered Alpers’s epitaph to the business of making music. In fact, you get the sense just by parsing the lyric sheet that Alpers is ready to take up a new occupation as a knitter, quilter, or one who crochets, because there’s such a sense of finality to the song that you have to wonder if she’s entirely lost interest in making music altogether.
Based on rating 7/10
Calling your project Bachelorette will inevitably lead to comparisons with Bjork. While not necessarily a bad thing, it can also result in all kinds of misleading information and accusations. Not that Annabel Alpers, the Bachelorette in question, need worry about such tittle tattle if this record is anything to go by. Hailing from the Christchurch region of New Zealand via the cosmopolitan suburbs of downtown New York, Alpers has been creating experimental slabs of electronica for a good six years now.
Based on rating 5.8/10
"Not Entertainment" is the closing track on Bachelorette's self-titled third album, and if you take project mastermind Annabel Alpers' lyrics at face value, it's also her swan song. Baldly she admits, "Nothing Bachelorette makes ever sounds the way I'd like it to," and despite cherishing "the number of believers in the independent music scene," Alpers concludes, "I'd rather watch the others enjoy themselves/ And just be happy that I'm not a part of it. " The song may reflect a struggle on Alpers' part to find motivation and meaning in Bachelorette, and her new album itself often seems to suggest a low-burning flame.
Opinion: Excellent
For Annabel Alpers, the mastermind behind the calling that is Bachelorette, music has always maintained a precise declaration. A resounding assertion in knowing that music can be peaceful and still inventive has given Alpers an expressive project in Bachelorette’s growing development of sound. Moving past her first two albums obscurity, Bachelorette’s all-encompassing sound and amazing scope is a definite noticeable shift in sound.
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