Bachelorette Bachelorette. Yesterday we discussed the "smart set", and wondered silently over if Eddie Gathorne-hardy had a favorite pop band and might they have been the Sonnets. But you are saying to me that you aren't that concerned with band's whose lyrical dimension is a lament over the lack of arugula at the country club buffet and you desire for something more interesting, of greater worth well then we give you Bachelorette. The one person phenomenon from New Zealand. First track Grow Old With Me, refrigerator hums, analog gates firing, her voice, her otherworldly voice. I'd be interested in telephoning New Zealand and listening to her speak. I am assuming there are alien effects pedals at work here, making her voice superhuman, but what if she answered in that VOICE. I knew someone who made claim to have called New Zealand and spoken to Rachel Phillipps rather regularly. Rachel is Martin's sister, of course. She would speak openly of her brother apparently. I had the number. I always meant to dial it from my rotary phone at the Kmart hardware counter. I never did. A few years later I walked past Martin on a Dunedin street, he with a leather messenger bag and pointed footwear and me with a stare permanently fixed downward and these animated blisters. First song is over. An introduction. Spacey. This album is more subdued than her last record. Second track The Light Seekers, a camp fire strum along, if your campfire is on the Seti-campus at the Allen Array. There in the mist the faded apparitions of Carl Sagan, Laika, Jules Verne, etc...listen to Bacheloreete strum her guitar with her tiny fingers on titanium strings, the smores smeared with marmite, the sketching in the sand of venn diagrams and rude graffiti in praise of Leonard Susskind. her voice, an instrument, she's not a marvelous singer, it's "emotionless" as the Pitchfork reviewer helpfully pointed out but that is the point. Isn't it. This is not an organic Fleet Foxes body lice with chords moment, it's scientific. Third track, a bit buzzier and with more purpose. It is interesting. Very. I know most pop singers are not interesting and even less so when they believe that anyone is concerned about their thoughts on grave matters but sometimes it's the entire package that convinces. The odd way she shapes her voice, the willingness to fill nearly all of the channels with her voice, the basic programming, it's all exceedingly delightful. Would I prefer her singing a tale of her having absconded with some rare Caravaggio for sale later on the black market for 100 million euros? Possibly. But that is for the next Simon Warner album. Are there Hp Lovecraft references here? Unknown. I've never read HP Lovekraft. i remember as a child my father having received the a manuscript copy of Battlefield Earth, I don't remember the context or why he had it in his possession. It was bound in a work binder, as if it was straight removed from Kinkos and even at my tender age back then I knew it was pish. L Ron Hubbard said the fastest way to make a mint is to start a religion. Writing dreadful novels is just a perk or propheteering. Next track, echoey vocals, minimalism, loveliness. Pitchfork also criticized the number of syllables she employs. I hadn't noticed. I used to find it endearing that Peter Jefferies always seemed to have a few words that ended in -tion, and that seemed more of the counterfeit style that I was easily dazzled by. I am easy. fourth track over, fifth track now, her voice fills the air, love. Sugarbug. The music is basic. on the last record songs were plucked from obscurity to sell automobiles. If they selected songs from here they might be moe appropriate for advertising interferometers or woolen socks. Being on Drag City and being so technologically minded seems anachronistic. Have they had other mainly digital acts? I will admit to not being much of a drag city fan, not since Making Losers Happy, it ranks with Siltbreeze in being mainly dreadful except for when they were releasing records from New Zealand artists. Well, I did like the first couple of Palace records. Does her geography speak well of her in the Drag City offices? Possibly. Next track, more of her voice. The scuttlebutt is that she is disenchanted with the music business and that this is the last Bachelorette record ever. This would be a tragedy. Retired at a young age, spending her mornings at the YWCA swimming laps in a black one piece, taking the early bird at the Country buffet, shuffleboard with the dispeptic in the early evening. Very sad. This is a beautiful album. The last record dazzled. This one is just about restrained loveliness, a confidence that you can make remarkable statements in whispers and wheezes. On the last album there was a pattern. The songs on the last album started of rather mundanely, then about one minute in they exploded in digital bloom, usually with her voice cascading from speaker to speaker, the music at the upper range of the eq and just exquisitely alien beauty. Now we are expecting those crescendoes bathed in distortion and the harmony of the spheres and so she has instead travelled down a different boulevard. It's reflection and tenderness, right now it's a bit X-Files. I will admit that the X-Files theme in pop music is a bit tired. Why not Breaking Bad my friends? There could have been a tie in with the next season, a complimentary bag of methamphetamine, a free miniature replica of the recreational vehicle/meth lab and a copy of the self-titled album by Bachelorette. Why is it that more people don't experiment with their voice in a similar way to Bachelorette? The Pitchfork expert mentioned Juliana Barwick as a more deserving example, the la benemérita if you will. But there isn't any commitment to a Juliana Barwick record, it is all sound, lovely snippets of sound but everything seems accidental, accidentally pleasing Bachelorette probably has a schematic of each and every one of her songs, a life sized model of each note and turn of phrase, a four dimensional plot of each moment of pristine gorgeousness. Next track, Digital Brain, more of the basic preset electronics, but her voice, layered, the hand claps sampled, perhaps a poor migrant farm worker, perhaps Dolores Huerta. This is Dolores Huerta's skin keeping time to the amorphous voices floating in synchronous pulses. Dolores would not approve of this blog. I would praise her skin, but I have not seen her skin, I have not heard her claps. But Bachelorette might provide her own handclaps. Second to last track, very affected voice, basic drum pattern, synthesizers, very Radiophonic/Dr Who soundtrack. Is this the plan will Bachelorette abandon us mere mortals and instead focus on providing the soundtrack for all of the next dozen spacecraft sent hurling out into the void on ion propulsion rockets? Hers could be the voice that greats higher intelligence a dozen light years from earth. When Gil Gerard is unfrozen he will ask for a Bachelorette CD first off and then a drink of Tab. Is Gil Gerard still skeet shooting on ESPN at three in the morning? I hope so. Last track, the epic track, the multi-segmented track, the lovely synths, the heart rate throb, her voice multi-tracked. I am repeating myself. The title suggests discontent. in this track is contained the message that brings tears to the eyes of every sensible person on the planet. You might say, hey we can hope that Maria Minerva learns a thing or two about writing a pop song and we really won't miss Bachelorette. But you'd be terrifically incorrect, we'd all laugh at you, heartily, and then we'd go back and listen to that desperate sign off in the midst of the dreamy cacophony as it slowly comes into focus "for the last time goodbye" and weep in infrared.