Out on her own

Annabel Alpers has put New Zealand on the tech-pop map writes Guelph Mercury reviewer Jake O’Connell. Recording as Bachelorette, the Christchurch musician’s first album for the American 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. LA Weekly describes Alpers’ music as “bright and transcendent as it is detailed and personal.” “You’ll hear Stereolab in her songs’ elegant electro sweeps, Krautrock in the rolling arrangements, a little Americana in the folksy instrumentation, and even some old WHY? in the more collagist moments.” In New Zealand, My Electric Family will be released by Alpers’ own recently formed label, Particle Tracks.