Listeners who know Nick Drake will hear him within seconds. The guitar line under “A car wash and a new pair of pants”, the third song on Lizzy McAlpine’s new album, sounds so much like his playing that Paste calls it distinctly Nick Drake-sounding. The resemblance turned out to be close enough that the song now carries his name: Nick Drake has a writing credit on it, with the blessing of his estate.
Angel, the fourth album from the singer-songwriter, came out on Friday 18 September through Indigo Blue and RCA Records. It is a 14-song record, a folk-leaning turn from the songwriter behind the viral hit “ceilings”, and it was written partly in a Broadway dressing room. Here is how the Nick Drake credit happened, and what the rest of the record sounds like.
How a Nick Drake Song Found Its Way Onto Angel
McAlpine told the story on the Switched On Pop podcast, as Stereogum reported. After she wrote the song, she played it to a friend, who said it sounded like a Nick Drake song. She had been listening to his album Pink Moon a lot at the time, but had not yet spent time with Bryter Layter, the record that contains “One of These Things First”.
That was the song in question. When she listened, she found it was in the same key as hers and opened with the same chord progression, even though, by her account, she had never heard it before writing her own. She described the experience as feeling like she had channelled something.
Her team reached out to the Nick Drake estate, and her label felt the two songs were a little too close. McAlpine wrote the estate a letter about how much his music had inspired her, and the estate agreed to a credit on the song. His name now sits next to hers on it.
Paste hears the result as an homage rather than theft dressed up as an interpolation, and notes a vibrato in her vocal that recalls Joni Mitchell. For listeners who have never heard Nick Drake, it is also an easy introduction. Put “One of These Things First” on after the Angel track and the family resemblance is obvious.
What the Rest of Angel Sounds Like
The Nick Drake echo fits the record around it. The album’s release announcement, carried by BroadwayWorld, describes its influences as running from 1970s Laurel Canyon folk to 21st-century indie, and Clash calls it a folk-heavy album.
Paste hears a distinct, modern indie-folk sound built from layered guitar loops, twinkling strings and tip-toe drums, with ukulele, mellotron, dulcimer and harmonica worked into the arrangements. On “Two elevens” McAlpine uses Auto-Tune sparingly for a spacey feel. Clash hears 1970s Joni Mitchell in “Anybody’s fool”, and describes “Our strange ways” as a crooner-style track that runs past seven minutes.
The album opens with “The light in the painting”, the first single, released in July. According to The Lantern, the song briefly became a TikTok trend, with couples posting photos of each other over its bridge. It closes with the title track, which Paste notes is lifted by pedal steel.
A Love Record From a Songwriter Known for Heartbreak
The biggest change on Angel is the mood. Paste reports that in 2024 McAlpine was getting over a breakup when she started seeing someone new, and that on this album she sounds happily in love, which it calls a refreshing shift. Clash hears acceptance and closure where earlier records went for gut-wrenching heartbreak.
That does not make it a sunny record from start to finish. “Ugly things”, the second single, brings back the melancholy McAlpine is best known for, and The Lantern hears it as a step up from her previous work. “The crowd” is a piano ballad about grief, dedicated to her late father, and Clash notes it is a song she famously will not sing live.
The warmest song may be about friendship rather than romance. “Mason’s song” is addressed to Mason Stoops, her longtime guitarist and co-producer, and Clash calls it arguably the truest love song on the album.
Written Between Broadway Shows
McAlpine did not have much spare time while making Angel. In 2025 she made her Broadway debut in Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center Theater, opposite Jeremy Jordan, playing Nellie Collins, the sister of the cave explorer at the centre of the musical, as BroadwayWorld, Exclaim! and NYLON report. BroadwayWorld notes that The New York Times praised her performance.
She kept writing through it. NYLON reports that she wrote “Soldier of the road”, which features Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, in her dressing room between rehearsals. In a Rolling Stone interview, she said the Broadway run fed directly into the album, giving her confidence and the sense that she had got her light back.
Clash hears the effect in her singing. On “Peach”, it says, her vocals are more controlled and powerful than ever, which it puts down to her time on Broadway. Rolling Stone, for its part, calls the result “the magnificent Angel”.
The Small Team Behind the Record
Angel was recorded and produced with Mason Stoops and Taylor Mackall, her longtime collaborators, in and around Los Angeles over nearly two years, according to the release announcement. Stoops has also worked with Miley Cyrus and Mumford & Sons, and Mackall with Role Model.
Mackall also made one of McAlpine’s biggest moments happen. She told Rolling Stone that he introduced her to Joni Mitchell during a production rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl in October 2024, after she had watched Mitchell sing from about ten feet away, and that she barely remembers what she said. The live band preparing the new songs includes Stoops, Mackall on piano and Omar Akrouche on bass, with Kane Ritchotte on drums for the early shows, NYLON reports.
Before release, McAlpine played two phone-free shows, in Hackney in London and in Brooklyn, performing Angel in full to crowds who had mostly never heard the songs. She also co-directed the new video for “Over country” with her longtime friend Neema Sadeghi.
What the Critics Are Saying
The reviews are warm, with reservations. Paste gives Angel a B-minus, arguing that it drags in its second half because McAlpine’s style is so consistent across 14 songs, but concludes that the record is like a stained-glass window, ordinary in parts and remarkable held together against the light.
The Lantern makes a similar case more bluntly, saying the album departs from her usual themes of heartbreak while keeping an all-too-familiar sound, and that tracks seven to 12 can be hard to tell apart. Clash is the most enthusiastic, calling it her most devoted album and saying she has “taken folk into 2026 and made it entirely her own”.
Where Angel Sits in Her Catalogue
For newer listeners, Angel is McAlpine’s fourth album. Her debut, Give Me a Minute, came out in 2020, followed by five seconds flat in 2022, which included the Platinum-certified “ceilings”. The 2024 album Older led to a sold-out international tour, including nights at Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre, and its deluxe edition, Older (and Wiser), added “Spring Into Summer”, now Platinum, according to the release announcement.
“ceilings” went viral on TikTok in 2023, and McAlpine told Rolling Stone that she refused to join in with the trend at the time but finally did it this year, with more grace for her younger self. She is also due to perform at Carnegie Hall’s A Celebration of Rodgers & Hart on 5 October, per BroadwayWorld.
Viral moments turning into long careers has become a familiar story on these pages. Our look at how a bedroom demo took Sombr to Madison Square Garden traced one route. Lizzy McAlpine has taken a quieter one, and Angel, which she told Rolling Stone is her favourite of her albums, is a good place to catch up.
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