CRYSTAL CLEAR VINYL

On her third album, 2024's Older, singer/songwriter Lizzy McAlpine catches you off guard, crafting songs that are as lyrical and delicately rendered as they are affecting. If you haven't listened to McAlpine, you might be surprised by the emotional weight and nuanced musical sophistication at play in her work. While sharing the same creative musical space as Taylor Swift and Maggie Rogers, McAlpine has quietly carved out her own place in the contemporary pop landscape, crafting intimate, folky songs that sound like well-honed diary entries. It's a deeply enveloping vibe that made both her 2020 debut and her 2022 follow-up such unexpected delights, and she digs further into that vibe on Older. She also digs deeper musically, working closely with her collaborators, who include Mason Stoops, Ryan Lerman, Jeremy Most, and Tony Berg crafting beautifully attenuated piano and acoustic guitar arrangements. She also weaves in other unexpected instrumental sounds, framing her hushed, yet resonant vocals in dreamy pedal steel guitar on "The Elevator," woody reeds on "All Falls Down," and orchestral strings on "Broken Glass. " Though the term "break-up album" feels reductive when describing the nuanced emotions at play on Older, there's definitely a sense that McAlpine is working through some heartbreak. She walks the listener through her memories, setting you up to laugh with a cute romantic moment that hides a deeper wound. It's a poignantly dichotomous vibe she conjures throughout Older, as on "I Guess," where she returns to a warm moment out somewhere with her lover, singing, "I'll tell a lie just to bring you home/We dance together/You're not that good." Later, after they've gone home, she reveals, "Now I am sick, and You're probably drunk/You're saying things and they sound like love." It's that sound of love, the fantasy vs. the reality of a relationship, that fascinates McAlpine and makes Older such a lovely and bittersweet experience.