Portland, Oregon-based artist Anna Tivel released her seventh studio album, Animal Poem, via Fluff & Gravy Records on Aug 29. We covered a previous single from this release, the title track, earlier this summer. I'm also a fan of featuring her music on my weekly radio show. I keep coming back to her songs for a number of different reasons: the vulnerability, the elegance, and the general feeling that her songwriting speaks for a part of me. The kind of personal exploration that her music touches on feels both refreshing and slightly cryptic–like you have to work at it for a while, to really uncover the magic. It's a puzzle that your mind has to solve, wrapped in a dialog of soothing instrumentation that includes piano, semi-hollow electric guitar, and acoustic drums.
The lyrical power of "White Goose" emerges from its bold simplicity, representing the fortunate confluence of personal depth, syntactic mastery, and a willingness to yield to the power of the moment. The production quality and the balanced arrangement allow for the song to progress in a colorful way: mimicking, in a sense, the organic polyphony of nature itself, with instruments standing in for physical elements, the energy flowing like a late summer wind through the ponderosas and tall flowers.
We gain privileged access to a unique moment in time as accidental guests in a symphony of amity and improvisation.
Recorded live in a circle with some of my dearest friends, Animal Poem was made in conversation. We wanted to be together in the room, to listen and respond in real time without the separation of walls and headphones.
The essence of "White Goose" lies in the cultivation of that tenuous bond between humans and the earth, not just as a visceral moment of connection, but also as an acknowledgment that beauty and vulnerability are inextricably linked, like two stars 'mapping the night shift' together.
drunk with power, sick with pain,
i laid in fields to feel something
small and lost and full of thanks,
i guess the rain just made me think of it
Ann Tivel's latest release Animal Poem is out now and you should listen to it.
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