Lizzy McAlpine Doesn't Fall Flat with Five Seconds Flat
Releasing music since 2018, Lizzy McAlpine has blazed onto the scene. Her sophomore album Five Seconds Flat was released this past Friday and it is a masterpiece. There are four collaborations on this album including erase me ft. Jacob Collier, reckless driving ft. Ben Kessler, weird ft. Laura Elliot, and hate to be lame ft. FINNEAS. While McAlpine keeps consistent with her recognizable staples, she manages to change her sound each song to keep things fresh.
Five Seconds Flat is a journey that takes us through a range of emotions, making long stops at heartbreak, but coming to a resolution at the end.
The opening track Doomsday starts off on the more depressing side of feelings with eerie chords and lyrics. McAlpine pulls from her musical theater background to deliver us an incredible resolution, before stripping back again at the end.
On reckless driving, McAlpine and Kessler tell the story of a doomed relationship. Weaving the story through singing their respective verses, they overlap on the bridge building anticipation that never really resolves. The track ends before the last line finishes and one is left with the line “And one day it'll kill us if I”.
Ceilings begins with an acoustic riff that continues throughout the song. Strings come in the chorus and build on the romanticism of wanting to always be with someone. It is a relatively sweet song until the outro where the instrumental builds and with delicate vocals, McAlpine informs us “but it’s not real, and you don’t exist”. This song crushed me.
McAlpine tells of the pain of a breakup on Firearm. The song is mostly acoustic and calm until a a slight pause right before the bridge comes in heavy. Instruments come full blast and McAlpine’s voice is raw as she sings “What a joke, was it all just an act?”. This song captures the range of breakup emotions. From pain, to anger, to acceptance or not caring at the very end.
Hate to be lame perfectly blends Mcalpine’s and FINNEAS’s voices together. The soothing intertwining of artists’ voices juxtaposes the song’s details of a relationship in flux.
The album’s title Five Seconds Flat comes from a line from the last track orange show speedway, “When you're racing head-first towards something that'll kill you in five seconds flat” .
A song about how long it takes to fall in love with someone (five seconds), it also tells how fast things can change. It’s the most upbeat song on the album by far and adding a bit of whimsy, the bridge is McAlpine and a friend talking on a voice memo. It feels like you’re there with them, experiencing the “fireworks” that they talk about.
I love this album. The instrumentation is perfect, the lyrics are phenomenal, and the collaborations were well balanced. Sometimes when you listen to a complete album, it feels like the artist is throwing in random songs to add length, but each song here was another step in the story that McAlpine was telling. Five seconds is all it takes to fall in love with Five Seconds Flat.