Bachelorette (Annabel Alpers) interview (2007)

 

Feature: Bachelorette - The Loop from Isolation to Inspiration

By Zoe Hooper (photography by Clemency Gilmour) NZ Musician, December/January 2007 (Vol:13, No:3)

Down in the deep south, by the mouth of Rakaia River, in a town with a population of 85, camped in a hut built by her great grandfather, Annabel Alpers has spent a good part of the year living up to the name Bachelorette. Alone, with just a computer and an assortment of instruments to keep her company, she pretty much single-handedly wrote, recorded and mixed her debut album 'Isolation Loops'. How wonderfully fitting. 

"I just chose there because it was somewhere quiet and peaceful and I could just concentrate on recording an album. I needed to sort of give myself some space... to sort of focus on just getting it all done."

As we talk the Christchurch-come-Auckland 28-year old is in Wellington on her album release tour. After the opening gig in Auckland several nights earlier she's driven down to the capital to play, but the nerves are still jangling from the last performance.

"I was pretty nervous on the first night. I'm a little bit too idealistic when it comes to the material I want to play. I just wanted to play all new material and I think perhaps a few people may have been disappointed I didn't pull out some of the songs off the EP," she confesses.

So will she be changing the set list for the Wellington fans? God no. Even though she comes across on the phone as quiet and slightly introverted, this is a woman who does what she wants. She's bored of those old tunes and nobody's going to change her mind.

Alpers' musical career began at 17 when, after spending childhood weekends listening to mum's Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond and Beatles records, she formed a band with her boyfriend of the time.
Indie group Mouse featured Alpers on bass and keyboard. She later picked up guitar when a fan joined the band.

"We met Paul at a school formal where we had sort of crashed in on this covers band. We played a song by Ride and he just really loved it 'cos the covers band were playing really bad covers. We got up and played a song by one of his favourite bands."

After a grand total of three gigs Mouse split and Alpers went on to be part of psychedelic pop band Hawaii Five-O and also start out on her solo career.
"I was writing things that didn't sort of work in that band situation because we liked to keep things quite collaborative. I had a wee backlog of them, so that's how I got started doing solo stuff. In '98 I did a few gigs under the name The Bedazzler."

Having completed a degree in composition at Canterbury she decided to move to the big smoke to focus on her music and do honours at Auckland University. The Bedazzler was thankfully ditched in favour of Bachelorette, and after a few years and some home recording sessions her first recording came out in 2005 under Arch Hill - a seven track EP titled 'The End of Things'.

Annabel's quirky lyrics - "my electric husband, he makes me milkshakes in the morning, he's my blender, he's my juicer, my happiness producer" - and unusual sound, which has been compared to Stereolab and Broadcast, was well received. She says she wasn't trying to sound like anybody else, her music developed from the variety of instruments she's collected over the years.

"I've got about seven keyboards. A couple of them are stand-up organs and then I've just got a whole bunch of little things like ukulele, autoharp and guitar..." The list does go on.

While she recorded, produced and mixed the entire album herself, Dale Cotton mastered it and "gave a few tips along the way". Ryan McPhun features on second track A Lifetime, on tape noise and a few other instruments, and Mestar's Stefanimal plays his synthesiser bass on Complex History of a Dying Star.
Further pushing the total isolation theme, Alpers also ditched Arch Hill to release the album under Electroplate - a label of her own creation. The reason is simply that she spends more money on making music than she makes from it.

"It's an attempt on my part to see if it's a bit more possible for my music to support itself. I probably can't support myself financially though music, but I'd like it to be sustainable."

The album has been described as more lush than the EP, but despite the good reviews Alpers isn't too sure about her latest creation.

"I always have a problem listening to stuff I've finished. I think just 'cos I've heard it so many times I lose all perspective so it's hard for me to say really whether I'm happy with it or not. All I can hope is other 

people will enjoy it. For me what I get out of it is the process of making it, but once it's done, once it's finished, that's it for me."

Ignore the 'sounds-likes', 'Isolation Loops' confirms Bachelorette has a very original sound as well as an original approach to songwriting - she explores relationships between people via analogies with sub-atomic particles and cosmology. But fear not, there's a playful pop spirit at work here too!

The day after she doesn't perform songs from her EP in Wellington her MySpace page is filled with comments. People are either raving about the performance or complaining the venue was too packed and the bouncer wouldn't let them in.

Two more performances in Christchurch and Dunedin and then Alpers heads back to Auckland, but only to pack her bags again.

"I'm moving back to Christchurch for a bit," she announces as our phone conversation comes to an end.
"I want to record another album and I don't really have much need to stay in Auckland."

She also plans to work on improving her live show and tour overseas. By then she'll have at least three records under her belt.

Meantime it's back to her great grandfather's hut to tinker on computers, plunk away on keyboards and continue the secluded life of a Bachelorette.