Annabel Alpers – New Zealand’s one-woman-and-her-computer act Bachelorette – is about to release her third record, My Electric Family. The album nicely lives up to the description that Alpers gives for herself on Bachelorette’s MySpace page – it is indeed like she ”took too many mushrooms and fell in love with a computer.”
The opening guitars of the first track, ”Instructions for Insomniacs” have a repetitive, almost hypnotic sound to them. It would seem that Bachelorette wants to soothe and lull the aforementioned insomniacs to sleep (in a good way), but the song picks up to a point where you’d rather be tapping along than napping no matter how many nights you’ve been sitting up. Songs like ”Mindwarp” and ”Her Rotating Head” really show Alpers’ love of electronic, while ”Telepathy Boy” and ”Dream Sequence” play up her use of dissonant backgrounds to compliment her sweet and poppy voice.
Bachelorette is going on tour starting in May and will be playing a lot of U.S. shows, including three dates in New York, five in California and at least a dozen in between. My Electric Family will be out in May; if you’re into melodic, electronic indie pop (I kept thinking of the Bird and the Bee and Obi Best) you should definitely check it out. Songs from Bachelorette’s previous albums are on her MySpace page. -Liza
