This album review discusses themes of domestic and sexual abuse.

On Friday, April 5, Lizzy McAlpine released her third studio album, Older, a 14-track collection of melancholy reflections on her relationship to identity, love, and mental health. With this lyric and melody-focused release, indie pop-folk darling McAlpine has pushed into a nostalgic soundscape while maintaining her trademark soaring vocals and carefully constructed delicacy.

“It wasn’t slow, it happened fast,” McAlpine sings in “The Elevator,” the album’s opening track. “And suddenly the only thing I saw was you / I didn’t know the half of it / And suddenly, I had everything to lose.”

Accompanied by a tender piano melody, which shifts into a heartbeat-like, percussion-led instrumental, this track offers the sonic equivalent of the emotional upheaval of a tumultuous relationship, a neat 100-second encapsulation of the album to come.

In comparison to her previous albums Give Me a Minute (2020) and Five Seconds Flat (2022), Older is both more mature and more centered. In the past two years, McAlpine has refined her artistic technique; the production and instrumentation feel more intentional here, with a greater emphasis on piano that is reminiscent of her debut album and the better-controlled sonic experimentation that launched sophomore album tracks “ceilings” and “doomsday” to billboard fame.

McAlpine also better utilizes her trademark image: driven lyricism in conjunction with brutally honest truths.

“Someone opens a window, music spills onto the dirt,” McAlpine sings in the second track, “Come Down Soon.” “I’m biding time ’til it disappears /… / Nothing this good ever lasts this long for me.”

This reflection on the uncertainty of beginning a new relationship in the wake of previous heartbreak leads into the quiet and eerie “Like It Tends to Do” and “Movie Star.” McAlpine masterfully constructs the beginning arc of a doomed relationship in which she feels like she is losing herself under the pressure to fit her partner’s expectations.

“Tell me how to be / More like you today, more than a shell of me,” she demands in “All Falls Down,” accompanied by a fuller, angrier instrumentation featuring horns, saxophone, and layered vocals. “I can’t stop the time from moving / And I can never get it back.”

McAlpine returns to quiet piano ballads in “Staying,” then guitar-driven melodies in “I Guess,” which culminate in a stunning, lifting instrumental that staves off the heaviness in these middle-of-album tracks, even as the relationship she describes worsens.

“What did you mean when you said you were sober now?” McAlpine sings on the standout following track “Drunk, Running,” a simple confessional melody ending in a stunning orchestral arrangement. “Caught you in bed with a Red Bull Vodka / … / Make a person out of memories / They won’t live up to it.”

Older is intimate, yet unafraid, a balance McAlpine strikes well in “Broken Glass,” which details an unexpected moment of violence and the ensuing emotional turmoil with startling clarity.

“I can see who you are now / That the window’s broke,” she sings. “Didn’t think it would go this far /… / I know you’ve been hurt / But you did it first to me.”

McAlpine follows this gut punch with yet another in “You Forced Me To,” a brutal recollection of the dizzying rationalizations and self-awareness in a sexually abusive relationship. There is then a solemn triumph to “Older,” the first single released off this album and, in the context of its surrounding tracks, a much-needed wake-up call to herself.

“Wish I was stronger somehow / Wish it was easy,” she sings in a painfully recognizable train of thought. “Somewhere I lost all my senses / I wish I knew what the end is.”

It is unfair, then, to nestle the following track “Better Than This” between “Older” and “March,” a touching and raw tribute to McAlpine’s father, who passed away in March 2020. Sonically similar, “March” simply comes out on top for me, a still-desperate grappling with grief that continues the tradition of McAlpine’s previous penultimate album tracks—“How Do I Tell You?” and “chemtrails”—focusing on her father’s passing.

“Never look much like my father / One year older but somehow I feel younger,” she sings on this new addition. “I see it more now that he’s gone / Or maybe I just see him in everything / And how it could take so long? / Thought I had it handled but it slipped through / I didn’t know it’d be this hard.”

McAlpine closes this chapter of her musical career with the nearly six-minute-long “Vortex.” In the song, the singer feels like she has stopped spiraling so much as she is spinning in place, breathing in both uncertainty and failure.

“It’s harder when you know all that we know,” she sings. “I always come back when I need a new song / And I’m tired of this and the way that it feels / … / I don’t know what to do anymore / Someday I’ll be able to let you go.”

Controlled even in its moments of passion, Older is a must-listen, a haunting retrospect on mourning, heartbreak, and obsession. Lizzy McAlpine has certainly soared beyond any ceiling.

If you or a loved one are experiencing domestic or sexual violence, help can be found through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.

Rose Chen can be reached at rchen@wesleyan.edu.