And she kind of had, in a way, given that she numbered amongst light-psychedelic nutcases The Polyphonic Spree for a while – she also put in some time in Sufjan Stevens’ touring line-up. Interesting apprenticeships the both of them, ensuring she was never really going to come out especially sta-prest.
Her enthralling debut album “Marry Me” was substantive corroboration of that, wedding the optimistically skewed folk traditionalism of Sufjan and swelling melodies of the Spree then tearing up the certificate in frequent giddy fits of expression. Her songs were like sweet hijackings, the kind of jolting surprise you’d giggle at and hope you were being taken somewhere nice. Or the cartoon-stars feeling you get from standing up too fast.
But if that album was just plain Alice – albeit with a mild, enjoyable concussion – then this is her high-def journey through the looking glass. Everything is that much thicker, more weathered, generously exaggerated and significantly less innocent. It pays increasing attention to composition and classy song structures and yet more to pulling them apart and lassoing passing listeners with the strands.
“Actor” is a particularly pulsating experience and key to its success is that she treats percussion throughout as The Flaming Lips often do; not as a passive timekeeper or even a creative addendum to the core melody, but a playful principal adversary worth sparring with regardless of how apparently simplistic it might seem. Hence “The Strangers” pips along, hypnotically holding focus, as the kaleidoscope churns out “Wizard Of Oz” chamber orchestration, clockwork gospel harmonies, fanciful retro daydreaming and a brief garage-rock gate-crash fuzz-out without ever knocking the balance, “Actor Out Of Work” and its gleeful melodic dive-bombing does battle with its insistently thuggish, grungy 4/4 signature, coming out all the fitter for it, and the rhythms of “Black Rainbow” and “Marrow” are complicit in driving a malevolence bubbling mischievously beneath possessed strings, filthy synthesised bass and overdriven guitar effects.
As a vocalist she never hot-brands an identity onto these tracks – she’s not the new Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom, neither does she try to be – but rather does as much as she has to do, fluttering daintily amid the beautiful carnage that she conducts with such inspired precision.
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