Anna Tivel‘s forthcoming ‘Outsiders’ is described as “an album about looking more deeply into ourselves and each other, really trying to see and examine the internal and external forces that keep us from connecting in real ways and the forces that draw us together”. It is an understatedly heady and intoxicating affair, both lyrically and sonically.
With Ben Lester on tack piano, the album opens with the hollow, percussive funereal swaying rhythm of the title track, a meditation on the first moon landing written while watching an Apollo 11 documentary and being overwhelmed by the way that all of humankind came together to share the experience, the message succinctly summed up in the line:
“Outsiders, look up,
It turns out we are not so different”.
At one point, she sings, “we are beautiful when we believe”, offering a ray of hope and light as we emerge from the darkness; this album makes you believe.
Extending the idea, the equally dreamy Black Umbrella is about all the ways we fail to really see each other, unfolding the story of a small-town robbery (“you were watching from the corner, as the day slowly unfolded/A ringing bell against the door of Frank’s Savings and Loan/And you saw it all, the teller ducking down, the gun exploding”) and a bystander who tries to help (“Blood was on the floor, the teller reaching out his hand/You felt his pulse, you called for help, you tried to stop the bleeding”) only to fall under the painfully familiar scenario of stereotypes and misconceptions about poverty, desperation, race, opportunity, and otherness (“Hands over your head they said, and you tried to tell the truth/The pillowcase, the getaway, the car, the blood and you/In your older brother’s coat, your stocking hat and worn out shoes/But to them, you were just some punk kid cracked out and skipping school… Gun, somebody cried, and you kicked your legs and broke the window/In a chaos of confusion, raining glass like diamonds loosed and you were/On your feet again and then a bullet danced right through you… And nothing in the headlines even mentioned you at all/Just a corner note about a cracked out kid who broke the law”).
Designed as a love song about the tangle that comes after the initial fireworks of a good connection, when two people start to really see each other and struggle with being seen, the slow waltzing Astrovan is a Prophet-warmed exploration of vulnerability in people trying to reveal and accept themselves in love as she sings “I love you, I’m nervous, my heart beats imperfectly, sometimes I act like a clown/In bright colored makeup, to hide my mistakes and the fear that you’ll figure me out… I love you, forgive me, my suitcase is empty, I lost all the things that I am/Like kissing you tenderly, right off the highway, the back of a gold Astrovan”.
Tracing a scuffed shuffling rhythm, Heroes draws on the way we romanticise the lives of the people who make art that inspires us, but fail to see the darker side of what compels them, mental health and destructive self-absorption (“You wake in a stranger’s bedroom, awash in last night’s cheap booze/And she don’t pretend to know you, she just pulls her work clothes on/You stumble through the weekend, til you finally call your girlfriend/I guess it’s just not working, I guess I’m just a dog”), a cautionary tale about emulating them (“You sit at the kitchen table, a six-pack and a capo/An artist and an asshole, you write all of your wrongs/And your heroes grow unruly, they overdose or just leave/Their lives are fucked up movies and you’ve studied every one …But who are you gonna become if all of your heroes are gone”).
Featuring backwards tapes, piano and an iPhone Voice Memo, the hushed lullabying Two Dark Horses was inspired by seeing two horses running through the fog, prompting thoughts about how humanity and animal rage can exist simultaneously, exploring the fear that makes us blindly intolerant, the inability to see each other as fully but also our capacity to grow and change and be free.
Conjuring a more experimental side, with jittery morse code percussion and jazz bass notes, Royal Blue reflects on the few deep relationships that we have during our lives (“Emily, I cannot be alone/Something deep inside of me is full of straining wire and bullet holes … I’m scared of getting old/Losing every battle with a body slowly growing still and cold/I want to free my fearful soul/Climb above the buildings til I’m filled up with a heaven I can hold”) and the fear of them vanishing (“but the doves are blind and flying way too low..what if flying doesn’t take, and we’re alive only to ache/Running wild and tempting fate”).
Featuring John Dehaven on trumpet, the slow swaying Ruins has Tivel musing about the difficulty of making genuine apologies (“It’s hard to say sorry, it’s humbling and scary, a gust of wind tearing your mask away …beautiful words are not real without something to heal where the glass is cracked”), from simple everyday moments to the contrition of those in power, how saying sorry is seen as a sign of weakness rather than the strength to learn and change.
Again playing experimental, jazz-inclined scuffs, Ben Lester on vocoder, set to an appropriately circular rhythm, The Dial stems from a dreamcatcher tossed from a car in front of her and spending weeks on the road, exposing your soul to strangers (“Oh my god I go around again/There’s a heavy wind and the rain keeps coming/Sing it soft so they all lean in, give them everything, give them all you got…let the truth come crashing/If I don’t believe it then no one will/So I brace myself, til the next town passes”).
Mental health, the fragility of the mind and how it can infect others underpin the moody piano, Moog and organ-based nervy rhythms of Invisible Man (“I awoke, in the early morning, in my own apartment, up above/Where you stood, in a bed of flowers, telling no one real to shut up/Get out, get out, I don’t want you in my brain”) with the realisation “that I’m just another madman/And I see myself in you”.
It closes with, firstly, the acoustic guitar and Wurlitzer sounds of the sparse, minimal The Basement, a deceptively gentle conversation between two people about a drunken sexual encounter, the messages boys give out and the messages girls take in and the ugly consequences that can result (“That night, in the basement, I’ve been trying to forget… It’s fine, it happens, and we both had too much/You know, I’m not mad, I just have to run/You laughed about it after, said you always get what you want/And I left, while you were sleeping, and that’s the last we talked”).
Finally, comes The Bell featuring just Tivel on acoustic and Courtney Hartman on electric guitar, a hopeful song about watching someone you love pull themselves up out of a dark place (“I know you’re a crazy dreamer, I know that you still believe/Something good is just beyond the darkness of this dream/And time will tell a softer story, how you climbed above the wire/Held that hammer high above and made the damn thing chime”) and about the need to make that effort because “nothing ever changes til you ring the bell”.
Despite the flawed and honest characters of Tivel’s songs, with their troubling emotions and struggles with mental health, Outsiders is low-key and quietly optimistic. Masterfully crafted and performed, it is Anna Tivel’s finest work yet.
Order Outsiders via Bandcamp: https://annativel.bandcamp.com/