Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter Lizzy McAlpine may have sold out Birmingham’s O2 Academy, a 3000-capacity venue, but the stage’s setup (as well as the music later played within it) suggested she and her band might have been more at home at Selly Oak’s Indie Lounge. Floor lamps were scattered between vintage chairs and mic stands, evoking the feel of a homely studio or local bar rather than a headlining show. Before McAlpine even stepped on stage, it was apparent that this concert would be a far more relaxed affair than a typical pop concert. 

Indeed, this was largely to accommodate the needs of McAlpine herself. Citing mental and physical health concerns, the 25-year-old singer cancelled the European dates of her last tour; the laid-back approach to this new show, in which she and her band donned headphones and remained seated for the duration of the performance, enabled her to focus on the music itself. (She has also forgone an opening act on this tour, allowing her to start and finish performing earlier.) Not only did this ensure that McAlpine would be able to stay afloat within a hectic touring lifestyle, but the cosy studio feel of the staging lended itself well to the music – which here played within the same gentle folk-and-chamber pop ball pit as her most recent album, 2024’s critically acclaimed Older. 

Backed by a band that seemed to share the same consciousness, operating as one collective rather than a series of moving parts, McAlpine (after walking on stage to raucous cheers) opened with ‘The Elevator’ – a tender, hopeful Older track that suddenly blossomed into a folky sunrise. As the song crescendoed, the lighting surged, and the crowd was stunned to silence. Here we were, united by our love for an artist who had endured so much, who was now mere feet from our faces. 

The setlist mostly moved chronologically through the Older tracklist. The blue-eyed ‘Come Down Soon’, here with an extended outro, excelled in a live setting, with lonesome pedal steel making McAlpine’s wistful vocals crackle like electricity. ‘All Falls Down’ in particular was an early highlight, with McAlpine joking that she wrote the song in the midst of her aforementioned tour struggles – and the lyrics about pressure and imposter syndrome only cut deeper when you realise how much happier the singer seems on her current tour. A lyric change, mentioning ’25 and a sold-out show’, prompted an eruption of cheers; despite singing about a dark experience, McAlpine let out a slight chuckle. 

Even when songs not from Older were played, they were bent to fit the sonic world of the album in order to create a cohesive concert experience. The apocalyptic ‘doomsday’, from McAlpine’s second album, had a country tinge to it akin to ‘I Guess’; her haunting cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Circle Game’ was stripped bare to a guitar and a vocal line, just like ‘Better Than This’. In particular, the lyrical content of Mitchell’s song – namely, the fear of growing up – was right at home alongside Older’s title track, which similarly explores a longing to know how the future turns out. For an audience mostly consisting of teens, this was emotional warfare of the best kind. 

What struck me was how invested McAlpine seemed to be in her newest songs; during ‘Better Than This’, a stark guitar song about moving on from an ex-partner, her face was anguished and conflicted, as though she were experiencing the song’s lyrical content in real time. Compare this with, say, ‘Over-the-Ocean Call’ from her debut album – a lovely song but performed with less emotional immediacy here. McAlpine herself has said that she feels somewhat emotionally distant from much of her back catalogue, so the (sparse) inclusion of previous songs here only sought to accentuate how at home she seemed within her newest material. What worked about the show was the same thing that worked about Older as an album; authenticity, that favourite buzzword of the minute, was in the bones of the songs, and McAlpine didn’t have to try to sell it because it was so true to herself. She believed the words she was singing, and thus so did the audience. 

As the concert wound to a close, we were treated to a couple of renditions of cuts from her recently released ‘deluxe’ version of Older: ‘Spring Into Summer’ embodied the laidback, soulful vibe that had characterised much of the set thus far, and burst forth in its coda as a warm, communal number that everyone gleefully waved their hands along to; ‘Pushing It Down and Praying’, a curious ballad about the overlap between lovers, was an emotional upheaval embellished by one of McAlpine’s most compelling vocal performances of the night. 

Then the moment the crowd had been anticipating all night arrived; as the final song of the evening, McAlpine played her TikTok-famous ‘ceilings’, and it was every bit as climactic and intense as the studio version – in some ways more so, given the aching quality of the live vocals and drums that resembled a racing heartbeat. The crowd screamed the bridge like it was free therapy, stretching out a fleeting moment into a memory that would stay with us forever. 

McAlpine thanked the audience for coming, then her and her band took bows and left the stage. I spent far too much on a poster at the merch booth, then left the building. There was a gentle drizzle in the nighttime air, the refreshing, welcome kind that settles coolly on your skin. I hit play on the Older album, confident that I would never again hear the album in the same way. It may have been a Brat summer, but I’m more than ready to have an Older autumn.

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