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Alpine: Tiny Desk Concert

By Stephen Thompson
Published August 12, 2013 at 2:00 PM EDT

Alpine's music doesn't instantly present itself as Tiny Desk material: The Australian sextet crafts busily impeccable pop music with a danceable sway, prominent synths and the charming shared lead vocals of Phoebe Baker and Lou James. That's a lot of ingredients to strip down to a semi-acoustic set in the NPR Music offices; there's virtually no margin for error.

Thankfully, the two women at the band's heart possess gorgeously interlocking, harmony-intensive voices that require no sweeteners. Alpine's debut album, the brightly catchy A Is For Alpine, is a high-gloss studio production, which only helps make this four-song set — recorded at 9 o'clock at night to kick off an after-hours party on a nearby NPR roof deck — an essential companion piece. Taken together, the album and this relentlessly engaging performance form a charm offensive that's awfully easy to love.

Set List

  • "Gasoline"

  • "Villages"

  • "Hands"

  • "Softsides"

    • Credits

    Producers: Bob Boilen, Denise DeBelius; Editor: Audio Engineer: Suraya Mohamed; Videographers: Chloe Coleman, Denise DeBelius, Becky Lettenberger; photo by Chloe Coleman/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    NPR Music
    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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