Customer Reviews

My Electric Family

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I was initially drawn to Bachelorette after hearing "Her rotating head" on a local independent station 90.5 WBER. The retro pop-disco single will hopefully find it's way into rotation along with the other artists enjoying the genre's current resurgence. Lots of tempo changes & crafty mixes keep you listening through the first half of the disk, but the tracks slow & get more moody as it progresses. The first 2 tracks remind me of the Shins - Wincing the Night Away, not a bad thing to be likened to. While a good work overall, I feel the rest of the collection falls short of the promise of track 4.

On Annabel Alpers' Myspace page, it mentions that she took too many mushrooms and fell in love with a computer thereby enabling the New Zealand native to craft music as Bachelorette. On "My Electric Family," Ms. Alpers explores densely layered psychedelic soundscapes drowned in a drone of extensive electronics. For reference, think The Sugarcubes meets Joe Meek filtered through a Radio Shack TRS-80.

On "My Electric Family," Alpers meshes the light with the dark resulting in an off kiltered listening experience. Heavy songs brush against lighter fare and the results are mixed. The theremin enhanced opener, "Instructions For Insomniacs" kicks things off with an airy acoustic guitar before building into a breathy and bouncy country ballad. The dread inducing "The National Grid" follows sandwiched by the futuristic disco of "Mindwarp." Elsewhere, antiquated reverb drenched synths hum nicely along twangy guitars on "Donkey." As the album closes, Bachelorette earns her self imposed Sci-Fi folk label with the organ heavy "Where To Begin" and the woozy "Little Bird Tell Lies." Alpers is a space cadet of the highest order and that's a compliment.