The opening track on folk-pop singer-songwriter Lizzy McAlpine’s third album, “Older,” is only one minute and 40 seconds long. In that time, “The Elevator” carries the listener into McAlpine’s internal world, climbing a steady piano melody toward a drum-led instrumental before the song meets an abrupt end — depositing the listener at the second track, but more importantly, in the thick of McAlpine’s current conundrum.

“It wasn’t slow, it happened fast,” she sings in a near-whisper, readying her heart-rendering thought. “I think we can make it; I hope that I’m right.”

The track sets the listener up for the album that follows: “Older” is a rich world for the listener to live within precisely because the songs vary in range and emotionality. Her songs tend to focus on maturation, entering and leaving relationships, and learning to trust and be trusted. On “Older,” that includes navigating grief and growing older, while watching others grieve and grow older, too.

“Older” follows McAlpine’s 2021 album, “Five Seconds Flat,” and its viral hit “Ceilings,” McAlpine’s first entry into the Billboard Hot 100.