Straight out of internet fame, Lizzy McAlpine returns with her sophomore record ‘Older’, an album stripped entirely of polished studio safety nets and instead trades her hyper-engineered hits for analogue warmth, countryside recording studios, and live room imperfections. It’s an album full of breathtaking emotional confrontation, and sees McAlpine lean into an unvarnished space full of country guitars, horns, and uncompressed pianos.
Her vocals are fragile and intimate as ever, and it’s a record steeped in the “coming of age” concept of young adulthood. Complex relationships. Messy dynamics. Co-dependency. This is a record that turns confessions into grand epics, settling into the messiness of growing up. Let’s grow up together…
Opening with The Elevator, we are immediately pulled into a sanctuary as fragile keys build into a soaring, heartbeat-paced track. McAlpine maps out the terrifying weight of falling fast with the confession, “can we stay like this forever, can we stay like this forever, please?”, capturing that suspended moment of bliss before gravity takes hold of her. The song acts as a tiny room that suddenly opens up into a vast, sunlit sky, setting a really cinematic bar for the entire LP. Her vocal delivery here is very tender, suspended over a pulse that feels so supernatural. An intimate opening.
Transitioning seamlessly into Come Down Soon, the production adopts a country-esque driving nature that feels tailor-made for golden-hour. Light acoustic strumming propels the track forward while lyrics tackle the deep-seated paranoia of happiness, admitting, “nothing this good ever lasts this long for me”. It is a golden slice of bittersweet folk-pop perfection, carried by an easy, rolling rhythmic pocket that masks the anxiety lurking beneath the surface. You can practically feel the warm breeze rushing through the car windows as the guitars weave around her gorgeous, conversational vocal runs. A song for all the avoidants out there!
With Like It Tends To Do, the tempo slows right down again to let realisation breathe. There are delicate fingerpicking guitars and real atmospheric sound to this one and McAlpine gives us subtle, quiet resilience bubbling underneath heavy sorrow, breaking, “I can’t tell if it felt like we had nothing to lose, or if everything had changed like it tends to do”. The arrangement moves with organic ease on this cut, making the heart-wrenching cycles of romance feel… kinda oddly comforting? There’s a somewhat tired acceptance to this one to be honest. And the soft swell right at the end of the track is the only major cushion point the track manages pushes to.
On Movie Star, McAlpine turns relationship dynamics into a dramatic widescreen film set. Subtle guitars and woodwinds float around her hushed tone as she dissects the tendency to romanticise toxic patterns, whispering, “I feel like a movie star in the leading role, famous to someone”. There’s a real Kacey Musgraves inspiration on this one I feel. There’s a slow-burn vibe throughout but this only intensifies the narrative progression, as her ‘leading role’ quickly turns into “I feel like a movie star but it’s getting old”. It’s like watching your own life play out from a dark seat in an empty cinema. It’s a real mirror.
In All Falls Down, dynamic horn arrangements and jazzy production mask a much deeper existential spiralling. Here, McAlpine tackles the relentless pressure of time and public expectations, delivering, “22 was a panic attack, I can’t stop the timing from moving and I can never get it back” in the most angsty we’ve heard her so far on this record. It’s a playful track with a weary cadence, and a real masterpiece in pairing upbeat, swinging sonic textures with such heavy emotional weight. Kicking that dust on the way home, this track is chaotic and has a theatrical energy. You’re stumbling but you continue anyway.
Following that chaotic break, Staying brings one of the album’s most absolute standout musical shifts. The quiet bedroom-pop intro builds immense atmospheric tension until “hold me until someone sends me a sign”, which sticks around for the most gorgeous country drop in a pop song. I’m talking steel pedals, a steady snare drum, and some wallowing guitar chords. As the warm percussion crashes in the saloon doors, this track transforms into an unforgettable emotional payoff that snatches your heart. The contrast between the sparse opening and the rich, overflowing full-band feeling is breathtaking, proving McAlpine’s knack for structural dynamic tricks. It’s a real pay-off of a song. Stick around.
In a much-needed long breath, I Guess takes us into indie-folk territory, stripping away the atmospheric grandeur for a raw confession. Over bare acoustic guitar chords, she wrestles with the quiet settling of an imperfect love, sighing, “we danced together, you’re not that good, I’ll tell a lie but it’s understood”, and this track really has a raw, unedited live-take feel that brings a fresh delivery of vulnerability. That same feeling stays with you long after the final note fades out into the air and the outro “mmmm’s” fade out. There is nowhere for McAlpine to hide here, and that total transparency is precisely what makes the song so striking.
Heart-wrenchingly though, Drunk, Driving delivers one of the most haunting moments on the record as McAlpine recalls her friend recovering from alcoholism at a party: “caught you in bed with a Redbull vodka […] someone oughta hold you to your words”. Gentle pianos highlight her opening moments, and the track builds by the second verse with more steel guitars and a steady drum beat that drives it forward. As we get some stability though, her lyric “I’m so sorry I stayed when I shouldn’t” literally stays way too long into the mix. The track balances out over a 10-second period, where her dissonance and out-of-place line delivery really mimic the agonising delay of a goodbye. Oooft. It’s got some heavy fog-like backing vocals, and it’s a regretful track at its core.
The arrangement on this itself becomes an extension of her guilt, the outro using that high-pitched noise you hear in movies when a bomb goes off as the production builds and replays moments from this person’s life through violins, cellos, and a gorgeous symphony in such a suspended way it even catches our breath like a flashback. This is the most gorgeously arranged track on the album without a doubt and my personal fave. Shoutout to the whole production crew on this one.
Upping the atmosphere with a crisp opening, Broken Glass has a lot of acoustic layers and gritty lyrics: “broken glass on the table, pick it up, hold it to your throat”. McAlpine uses sharp metaphors to describe walking through the aftermath of an explosive fight, singing, “I can see you clearly now that the window’s broke”. It is a raw, tension-filled cut that captures how self-destructive love can become when two people refuse to let go (“don’t know why I held on this long but here we are”). The underlying rhythm feels tight and dangerous, suspended with tenderness while driving the track forward with a real momentum. It acts like the feeling of walking on eggshells in a room where the air has gone completely cold.
On You Forced Me To, the record descends into one of its quietest, most unsettling corners, stripping back the instrumentation until every room-creak and the triad of piano chords give it such a circus-y feel. It’s decay, but make it magnified: “I want you to hate me, I deserve it for my crimes”. Here, McAlpine interrogates the bitter act of coercion and the emotional exhaustion, delivering the stark line, “I have changed because you forced me to”, with a hushed, trembling composure that feels almost too private to overhear. The arrangement moves like a shadow on this one and it’s super haunting as it’s supposed to be.
The title track, Older, acts as the emotional anchor of the entire record. Built on a simple, looping and low piano motif, McAlpine confronts the passage of time and generational cycles, reflecting, “wish I was stronger somehow, wish it was easy […] I wish I knew what the end is”. It is a profoundly moving song that captures the terrifying beauty of growing up into 3 minutes. Her voice sits front and centre, completely unpolished and brimming with wisdom. It really captures that universal realisation that, really, no one has it all figured out or is coming to get you… no matter how old you get.
On Better Than This, McAlpine turns her pen inward for an excruciating act of self-interrogation, stripping away all impulses. She sings over fragile acoustic guitars and wrestles with the uncomfortable truth of her own flaws: “what if I’m not a good person? You always say that I am […] I think that I’m not who you think I am”. The arrangement on this one expands with delicate restraint, perfectly echoing such a claustrophobic feeling whilst she manifests “someone will love me better than this”.
Dedicated to her late father, March keeps us in this quiet meditation state. McAlpine mourns the loss, and the persistent loss, through lines like “so far away and then it hits you”, becoming a really poignant moment in time. The production moves with aching grace, allowing her tone to really carry the memories and pain of absence, paired beautifully with the lines “I see him more now that he’s gone”. You can only imagine.
Closing off the album on a similar note, Vortex spins us into a massive, 6-minute cinematic climax. A real master of her craft, McAlpine gives us dynamic builds, weeping brass, and crashing cymbals that swell around her final confession, “someday I’ll be able to let you go”. It’s so incredible, in fact, that it gives this project a really breathtaking end. It’s the cathartic close we were waiting for, and the track stretches out like a chapter that doesn’t want to be closed. Every musician in the mix is heard, the room only falls silent in its last moments, and it leaves an incredible mark on us all, remembering the thoughts and confusions we had by getting older.
Standing as a triumph of mature McAlpine, this record honestly proves that she’s operating in her own lane. Lizzy has been super vulnerable throughout, delivering organic arrangements, unflinching emotional honesty, and a grand, haunting experience. She’s managed to capture the disorienting nature of love and aging with such precise measurement, while also providing a warm sanctuary for anybody going through it. It’s the perfect soundtrack for an indie film, and has become an instant, timeless body of work for me. Let it wash over you.
Glerbie 