Anna Tivel reaches new heights on the song poetry of “Animal Poem”.
Reading the publicity regarding Anna Tivel’s latest album is like trying to unravel a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. Tivel is quoted as saying of the disc, “Every album is a snapshot, a momentary study of the way a mind reaches for understanding. I can feel myself reaching in these songs, for whatever is right beyond my grasp… It’s hard to know how to hold a creative life in a time that feels fraught with venomous division, careening technological advance, and an ever-widening chasm between the affluent and the dispossessed… What good are poems when affordable housing is scarce, the climate teeters on a dangerous edge, and war breaks out over misinformation spread by profit-hungry algorithms?” This is a truncated quote, the original much more expansive but just as enigmatic, although there is some clarity to be found when she says that the bottom line is when “People lead the narratives… This work is my own small addition to that communal story.”
To that end, Tivel offers here ten songs which are densely populated with words (or narratives if you prefer) which challenge the listener to listen oh so carefully as to treasure them. They are all perfect miniatures, opaque but telling, from the tired mom of the title song, the hoarder of ‘Paradise Is In The Mind’ and the romantic nostalgia of ‘White Goose’ or, on the album’s standout song, the cleaving to a Nina Simone song after a bereavement on ‘Hough Ave 1966′. This is not storytelling in a traditional manner but a perfect marriage of words and music, each song, not an encapsulation but a vivid collection of arresting moments. One can decide whether to delve into the words or just surrender to the sheer beauty of the songs.
The album was recorded in a live setting with Tivel surrounded by a circle of her musicians, helmed by co-producer Sam Weber, the result an incredibly intimate listen. Aside from her solo performance on ‘Hough Ave 1966′, the band weave a splendid blend of mystery and wonder throughout the album as they incorporate folk and jazz influences, at times reminiscent of the players who surrounded Joni Mitchell in her heyday. Tivel captures the sound of the disc perfectly when she describes it as “ghost notes in the high register of the piano, melodic guitar and bass lines briefly interwoven, earthy cymbals breathing.” There are psychedelic folk rock tinges on ‘Paradise Is In The Mind’, especially in its glistening opening bars and ‘Airplane To Nowhere’ takes flight with a Pentangle like swing, while the conjoined twins of ‘White Goose’ and ‘Fluorescence In The Future’ creep wonderfully as if they were plucked from a David Lynch like reverie.
Aside from Mitchell, one is reminded of two other singers from the seventies, Judee Sill and Dory Previn. That’s not to say that Tival sounds like them; rather, she breathes in the same rarefied air which sustained them. At times, the intimacy of the recordings is almost overwhelming. ‘Holy Equation’ captures each chord change on Tivel’s guitar as her fingers traverse the strings on a song which brilliantly captures a series of city scenes. ‘Meantime’ lyrically visits similar territory but in a more personal capacity (it’s the closest to a narrative song here), but it takes off mid way through when a hypnotic mix of guitar, Wurlitzer and mellotron briefly interrupts the mood. That said, it’s just one of the many moments on the album which are quite outstanding as Tivel’s glorious, hushed voice is cosseted by the wonderful arrangements. By the time the closing track ‘The Humming’, a hymn to looking back on one’s life, ends, it’s almost impossible not to return to the beginning and listen again and again. To return to the opening paragraph of this review, Tivel is not singing about the current travails that surround us; instead she lays out a collection of songs which just celebrate the humanity in all of us. As she sings in ‘Hough Ave 1966′, “Human kindness is overflowing.”
