Mica Levi - Blue Alibi (LP)

Mica Levi’s Blue Alibi landed in 2021, just months after the bruised, off-the-cuff rush of Ruff Dog, and it feels like a sibling that learned to breathe a bit slower. Levi has always kept one foot in the song and the other in the sound, which makes sense for someone who wrote those eerie, unforgettable scores for Under the Skin and the Oscar-nominated Jackie while also cutting their teeth as Micachu with the Shapes. Blue Alibi sits in that charged middle ground. It’s intimate, sometimes raw, and deeply attuned to the texture of small moments. You can hear the room air. You can hear fingers search for the next chord.

What grabs me first is how unforced it feels. Levi isn’t trying to prove anything. The record drifts between murmured, close-to-the-mic vocals and guitar figures that seem to wobble into focus, then lock. Percussion slips in like a thought, sometimes an actual drum machine tick, sometimes a thud that could be a hand on a table. The songs don’t announce themselves so much as arrive, and then they stick. Levi’s gift is the way a single phrase or looped idea becomes its own weather. You spend time inside it. That’s a film composer’s instinct redirected toward the miniature. The stakes feel small and human, but the spell is strong.

If Ruff Dog was the open wound, Blue Alibi is the bruise that lingers. There’s a softer edge, more space around the voice, a sense of looking back from the next room. Levi has worked with singers like Tirzah and Coby Sey, and you can feel that producer’s patience here. The guitar is the anchor most of the time, though other colors peek in, little synth smears and glints of noise that blur the line between playing and processing. Nothing showy. Everything purposeful. Even the rough bits scan as choices, not accidents.

The songwriting leans on repetition, but it never turns mechanical. Levi nudges a phrase in tiny ways until it catches new light, like a piece of glass turned in the hand. That gives the record a pull that feels almost private. You’re listening for small shifts. A harmony moves. A rhythm gets lazy or snaps forward. It’s the thrill of hearing someone follow their ear in real time. Fans who came in through the Micachu and the Shapes records will find the same DIY spark, but it’s warmer here, less jagged. The edges curl.

Reception at the time reflected that shift. Critics noted how Blue Alibi distilled Levi’s composerly instincts into short forms without sanding down their weirdness. That balance is why these songs stick around. They’re accessible, in the sense that you can hum them, yet they don’t collapse into tidy singer-songwriter boxes. You can file Blue Alibi next to other 2021 treasures, including Tirzah’s Colourgrade, which Levi helped shape, and trace a small map of London experimental pop that prizes feel over gloss.

For listeners building a shelf, this is a record that rewards the format jump. On a good system, the quiet parts bloom, the low end has a human pulse, and the edges of the guitar sound settle into the room like breath. If you collect Mica Levi vinyl, you know how alive their recordings can feel once you’re out of the laptop speakers. If you’re hunting for Blue Alibi vinyl, keep your radar up and don’t sleep on reissues. I’ve seen copies vanish fast, then reappear weeks later. It’s the kind of album you find while crate-digging, play once, then kick yourself for not grabbing it sooner. If you prefer to buy Mica Levi records online, set an alert and be patient. Mica Levi albums on vinyl tend to move on word of mouth, and this one has built a quiet chorus of admirers.

What I love most is how Blue Alibi turns restraint into atmosphere. Levi isn’t stacking instruments or flexing software tricks. They’re listening hard, trimming fat, letting imperfections breathe. That’s why the record feels close, even when it dissolves into hiss for a few seconds. It’s also why it works as late-night music, as morning coffee music, as a companion on the tram when the city hasn’t quite woken up. I’ve had it on walking down Gertrude Street, the guitar chiming along with the crossing beeps, and it suddenly made perfect sense. Anyone browsing a Melbourne record store or digging through vinyl records Australia-wide who wants something small, true, and slightly haunted should give this one time. Blue Alibi doesn’t shout. It settles in, then it stays.