By Claire Barickman A&E and Social Media Editor
On April 5, 2024, Lizzy McAlpine released her highly anticipated third studio album “Older.” After the huge success of the song “Ceilings” from her last album “Five Seconds Flat,” McAlpine gained a large following. Unlike her last album, however, “Older” has a much softer and organic sound that she has been working to find for the last few years.
On this album, McAlpine worked with several producers as well as a large band in order to achieve the sound that she has been searching for. In a recent interview about the album, McAlpine shared what this album means to her.
“Throughout the long and mostly tumultuous journey of making it, I have learned who I am as a person, who I want to be as an artist, and what kind of art I want to make. This album is a culmination of that growth, showcasing the rawest and most honest version of me.”
On her last album, “Five Seconds Flat,” there was a lot of post-recording production that McAlpine later felt wasn’t an accurate representation of who she is as an artist, so with “Older,” she wanted to do the complete opposite. Most of the songs on “Older” McAlpine recorded live with her band and she tried to keep the songs as close to the original recorded version as possible.
The album opens with “The Elevator,” one of the shorter songs on the album. The song focuses mostly on McAlpine’s voice, along with the piano that accompanies her singing. However once she is done singing, there is a big break where more instruments take over and finish the song. This song does a great job of introducing the overall theme of the album, the evolution of a relationship becoming toxic.
The first seven tracks of “Older” are the beginning part of the relationship before it starts to become toxic. Even though these songs are supposed to show the better half of the relationship, they still show the anxieties that McAlpine feels along with the beginning of the end, with songs like “Come Down Soon,” “Like It Tends To Do,” “Movie Star,” and “Staying.”
The first half “Older” also contains the song “All Falls Down” which gives the listeners insight into her personal struggles with fame, touring, and mental health. “All Falls Down” has a beautiful juxtaposition between the message and the production; in the lyrics, she is talking about her anxiety, while the music is fun and upbeat.
The final song in the first half is “I Guess” which is also the second single for this album. This song depicts the beginning of a new relationship when there are many questions and unknowns. Like many of the other songs on the album, “I Guess” has a soft instrumental in the background, with slight production to enhance her message. Throughout “Older,” McAlpine tends to end her songs with long instrumental outros that focus on her band’s playing rather than her singing.
The second half of “Older” is where we begin to see the darker side of this toxic relationship. McAlpine is very clear that in the relationship she is writing about neither of the people involved were good for the other. This half also includes her first single and the title track of the album “Older,” in which McAlpine discusses her fears of growing older and not being able to get back lost time.
In songs such as “Drunk, Running,” “Broken Glass,” “You Forced Me To” (which is the original demo McAlpine recorded), and “Better Than This,” she talks about how she knows she should leave this person because she is making it worse for both of them, but she can’t bring herself to leave. The songs on this half of the album have a more intense feel and the production and sound reflect these darker themes very well with louder drums and guitar as the songs build.
Similarly to her last two albums, McAlpine once again dedicated track 13 to her father who passed away in 2020, this time with the song “March” which discusses the struggles of grief and how the feeling of loss can hit you at any time, even if it has been years without them.
The final song on “Older” is “Vortex” which does an incredible job of closing the album in a way that is sad, yet slightly hopeful. This song does a beautifully heartbreaking job at depicting the seemingly never-ending cycle of being stuck in a toxic relationship, with lyrics such as, “We’re just awful together, and awful apart. I don’t know what to do anymore” that will cut right to the listener’s heart. I love the way the music builds as McAlpine spins deeper and deeper into this vortex. This song is the longest of the album coming in at nearly six minutes, two of those being dedicated to an instrumental outro.
Overall, this is probably my favorite Lizzie McAlpine album. The message that she sends in “Older” is a whole new level of depth that she hasn’t shared before. This songwriting on top of her more raw sound with her band has put this on top of my favorites to come out this year. If you are a fan of Lizzy’s past music or artists like Phoebe Bridges, I definitely recommend that you give “Older” a listen.
The Panther Press 