"Not Entertainment" is the closing track on Bachelorette's self-titled third album, and if you take project mastermind Annabel Alpers' lyrics at face value, it's also her swan song. Baldly she admits, "Nothing Bachelorette makes ever sounds the way I'd like it to," and despite cherishing "the number of believers in the independent music scene," Alpers concludes, "I'd rather watch the others enjoy themselves/ And just be happy that I'm not a part of it."
The song may reflect a struggle on Alpers' part to find motivation and meaning in Bachelorette, and her new album itself often seems to suggest a low-burning flame. As with past Bachelorette ventures, Alpers layers her vocals in all sorts of pretty but unemotional ways to present brainy lyrics atop artily mannered synth tones, grooves, and loops. Her work has an appealing intellectualism, but Alpers often fails to locate the human connection that makes other artists of her ilk great. Her style owes something to Laurie Anderson, but Alpers lacks Anderson's humor. Meanwhile, Stereolab is no less arch, yet they've also made fun, massively grooving pop music. Even contemporary artists who are plying a similar approach, like Sufjan Stevens, Max Tundra, and St. Vincent, find means through hooks or noise or pure emotional expression to make a palpable communion with their audience.
If you're willing to fully take Alpers on her own terms, however, there's value in Bachelorette. Specifically, there are a few songs here with lovely vocal melodies and harmonies, namely the stirring, hymn-like "The Light Seekers", the utterly gorgeous "Sugarbug", and the trilling "Tui Tui". You can't help but think that if Alpers lavished more attention on pure sound she wouldn't be far off from producing something similar to Julianna Barwick's The Magic Place. But her sonic backdrops never quite take hold, and modestly buzzy, bloopy tracks like "Blanket", "Polarity Party", and "Digital Brain" only barely compel interest. Meanwhile, Alpers' lyrics are almost uniformly delivered without emphasis and often are wholly indecipherable.
Even though wordy, tech-obsessed Alpers leans too heavily at times on 10-cent verbiage, occasionally a meaningful or moving phrase will poke through, like her confession on "Blanket" that "The only way to see you is through the hole in my chest." Otherwise, lyrical opacity is just another way in which Bachelorette tends to keep you at arm's length. If Alpers' unease on "Not Entertainment" reflects a desire for a change, here's hoping she'll pursue avenues that better take advantage of her gifts.
