Bachelorette Rises Above Technical Difficulties in Brooklyn

Even if Annabel Alpers, the New Zealander behind Bachelorette, hadn't intended to end her performance Monday night at Union Hall in Brooklyn, N.Y., after 35 minutes, she wouldn't have had much choice.

"I just spilled Jagermeister all over my computer, and now the keys won't work," Alpers said, seconds after finishing her final song, a lush, rubbery synth-pop tune that might have once been played over the closing credits of a John Hughes film.

Even before she killed her keyboard, Alpers had spent much of her set wrestling with technology, using a temperamental dual-laptop setup to layer prerecorded sounds and loop snippets of music she sang and played live, both on keyboard and quavering hollow-body electric guitar.

She introduced her latest single, 'Do the Circuit,' available at the merch booth on 7" vinyl, with what turned out to be an ironic sales pitch. "You won't find it anywhere but here," she said, seconds before laptop number two failed to load the track, and she was forced to move on to something else. "I guess you'll just have to buy the 7"," she said with a laugh.

After floating through a lovely 'Her Rotating Head,' a School of Seven Bells-style dream-pop tune from her latest album, 'My Electric Family,' Alpers offered a sheepish, roundabout apology, acknowledging the extent to which technical difficulties had marred her set.

"That song was in keeping with the theme of the night," she said. "That theme being human error, and getting it right sometimes."

Sure, Alper's songs started and stopped abruptly, and the live and canned bits didn't always mesh, but she managed to get things right -- or at least as right as they needed to be -- more often than not.

This, after all, was a rainy Monday night spent nearly 10,000 miles from Alpers' hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand. The 20 or 30 people in attendance were familiar with the music and more than willing to forgive the occasional digital hiccup.

While 'My Electric Family' benefits from the addition of side musicians, Bachelorette's live show shines the spotlight on Alpers, a soft-spoken charmer with a whispery voice and gift for melody. She fights losing battles with her Macbooks, but insofar as she emerges with choice snippets of sugary, shimmering electro-psychedelic pop, the audience wins the war.