New Zealand’s Annabel Alpers is Bachelorette, a 28-year-old multi-instrumentalist slowly making a name for herself as ’someone-to-watch’, combining a visual and enigmatic stage presence with wondrous, playful lyrics and truly distinctive songwriting. Having only one other release thus far (the psychedelic seven track EP The End of Things), Bachelorette’s debut album, Isolation Loops, draws upon what appears to be all of Alpers’ many talents to produce a genuinely unique record.

Alpers’ love for vintage instruments has led her to amass quite a collection of old keyboards over the years and they dominate her music. These electronic elements greatly aid her efforts and help create a real spatial, cosmic feel for her folk/pop tunes, allowing her to move beyond the recording context in which Isolation Loops was created (the album being recorded over several months within her grandfather’s hut in Canterbury Plains).

The first thing noticeable about Isolation Loops is its lyrical playfulness. Within a song that is about being love-struck yet lonely, Alpers feeds perfect simplistic humour to invigorate the tried-and-tested subject matter: “I went to his house/He offered me food/I only drank tea/Because it’s gluten free”. The humour and playfulness of Alpers is evident throughout the course of the entire record and it is quickly recognisable that Bachelorette is somewhat of a dag. Her songs move between giddy cuts about boys, with lyrics like “I had a crush on you, the very second time I looked at you,” and her fascination with science and the galaxy. Alpers even makes reference to “E = MC2” in ‘Complex History of a Dying Star’, continuing her litany of spatial references, with song titles such as ‘Intergalactic Solitude’, ‘Complex History…’ and ‘Subatomic Pop’ all referencing the likes of orbits and galaxies.

The music behind this Space Age lyricism complements their science-fiction-like nature, with warping electronic beats that change speed unexpectedly, creating cosmic-sounding effects and distinct pop melodies. All of this leads to a further dimension in Bachelorette’s album: dreaminess. Galactic and fantastical dreaming themes are complemented by the excessive “ahh-ahhs” found throughout the 11 tracks. An open imagination is crucial for the listener as songs open into a world of intergalactic and fictional domains.

Alpers showcases exceptional talent across a range on instruments on this record. In fact, with the exception of some basslines, drums and a 12-string, the singer plays every instrument herself, her harmonies in particular adding to the popish charm of Isolation Loops. The album is also helped by the fact that it does not over-rely on electronic elements and illustrates some more traditional pop elements.  This is most obvious in ‘And the Earth Knew Absence’ where bells and drums are used solely, as to strip back the track from its electronica, and ‘Isolation’ which relies upon acoustic guitar. Even the banjo gets a run during the infectious ‘Popacino’. Alpers use of bells, acoustic guitar and banjo create a feel-good simplicity as a break for the listener and demonstrate her ability to form pop music without heavily relying on technology to do the work.

What can be frustrating about this record is that there are moments, such as at the end of ‘Doo-Wop’, when Alpers over indulges her love of electronic gadgetry. Such over embellishment hurts the songs, burying the pop epicentre which is at the heart of her appeal. There is also a strange transition between tracks that has the potential to confuse the listener into thinking the album has finished, damaging the flow from song-to-song and hurting the concept of Isolation Loops as a fully constituted album and not simply a collection of songs. The whole transition of the album is cleverly constructed, however, as the fast paced pop and warping electronica increase toward the climax and everything is brought back down to earth at the end with ‘Holding Back One’, the slowest track of the record.

Alpers’ quirky song-writing and playful musical skills are very distinct and may require some time to grow on listeners, but for the most part Bachelorette has made a fun-filled adventure of an album. For someone who wants to reproduce with machines, this should come as no surprise.