Keepsake of the Week: “When The World Stopped Moving” by Lizzy McAlpine

“When The World Stopped Moving: The Live EP” is the third album and first live EP from singer/songwriter Lizzy McAlpine and is this week’s #KOTW.

In this semi-weekly blog series, we post our favorite new or re-discovered releases in independent music, our Keepsake of the Week, or #KOTW.

Lizzy McAlpine makes oldschool, simple music in the newschool, overproduced music industry. She uses her guitar and authentic vulnerability to write hundreds of stream-of-consciousness songs. Few songwriters find success this way, and often end up writing for other people. But every once in a while--usually with that rare kind of endless creativity and a little algorithmic luck--a Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran proves that intimate storytelling can be loud enough for stadiums. And in this quiet world that has locked us inside for a year, Lizzy’s soft voice has roared.

I’m going to call her Lizzy, because she feels like a close friend. Her second full-length record and most recent project before this, “Give Me A Minute” (2020), felt like both a break-up album and declaration of self-love. It carried many of us sensitive, guitar-playing introverts through quarantine. With Lizzy, I could escape the news and eat apple pie and pancakes. I could go to the mountains and the ocean all at once, perhaps my greatest wish. And in her song “Same Boat” I didn’t hear the romance; I just cried thinking of home, picturing the Northern Lights and my dad standing in the cold, trapped across the Canadian border and away from us. 

This record is different from her last. Not only is it an even more stripped down sound for Lizzy, recorded live and mostly acoustic; it is also happier. In the song “Let Light Be Light,” Lizzy admits that she struggles to accept the love she deserves, so her therapist advises her to be more open to the good, and in turn she confesses, “I think that he’s good for me / This boy that I found.” Lizzy--who studied songwriting at Berklee College and can make wordplay out of play words--understands the power of simplicity, and while her songs can feel unedited, they also bring the kind of profound honesty of reading someone else’s diary. In that sense, her sound has not changed in the last year, only her life and thought process have. She still sings the truth, but like any human going through a major change (such as the world stopping or finding happiness in a new relationship), her truth is changing.

The EP is strongest in its first half, the anxious half that invites listeners into Lizzy’s head as she questions her new relationship. In addition to “Let Light Be Light,” there is “...What Are We?” a declaration of love and innocence that somehow turns lines of apologies into accountability. “Lately the world is ending / So I won’t ask for too much,” sings Lizzy, “Lately the world is ending / And I find that I tend to be okay with too much.” My favorite track is the opener, “In Agreement.” Lizzy’s chord hand audibly slides up and down the fretboard here in a way that makes me miss live music and the mistakes tuned out by production. This song also has my favorite line on the record, another simple but truthful admission: “I don’t want this to fall through / Collapsing is what I’m used to / But we’re all in agreement / This is something I should hold on to.”

Lizzy McAlpine is that rare example of a person whose diary is actually well-written and a musician whose dozens of song “ideas” are actually worth recording. Don’t get me wrong; I recognize and appreciate the countless hours of work and practice that go into the art made by musicians who take their time. Thank goodness for the Kacey Musgraves and HAIM of the world. But I’m also glad there is art being made right in front of us and I think vulnerability should be expressed with imperfection. I think we’re all in agreement that Lizzy’s music is the light we need. After all, when the world stopped moving, she was exactly where we needed her to be: with us.

Stream “When The World Stopped Moving: The Live EP” everywhere now.

Photo by Lizzy McAlpine.