(2022) Anna Tivel - Outsiders  


Review:
Anna Tivel is a writer first, and a remarkable one, at that. The fact should not diminish the considerable charm of her fluttery, vibrant voice or the seductiveness of her melodies. It sheds no scorn on her talent for arranging songs with bright, just-enough instrumentation that augments but never buries their essential shape. And yet, with an album like Outsiders, and particularly with stand-out track “Black Umbrella,” you really have to start with the words. They would stand out on paper, which even the best lyrics often do not. Moreover, they fit with casual grace to Tivel’s tune, so that her precise, poetic story gains resonance and emotional heft from the way the notes run – and the way the notes run creates no difficulties at all for the flow of words. “Black Umbrella” tells a knotty story of a kid caught up in a bank robbery, maybe involved as a lookout or maybe not, but certainly not responsible for the violence when the robbery goes wrong. The narrator is trying to help a teller who is bleeding to death when the police arrive and mistake him (or her?) for a criminal; in the confusion, they shoot him dead. The whole lyric is well worth reading, and you can do so at the United Songwriters for the People’s Sovereignty Bandcamp page, but for a taste, here’s the verse where it all goes wrong.

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 the ground came up like some great flood and then you were not moving.

The “bullet danced right through you” and “the ground came up like some great flood” are particularly fine, active, idiosyncratic ways to describe a violent death, but the song is full of striking images. It would work reasonably well as the wireframe for a short story, but here, pared to ellipses, the song has a remarkable, subtle power. “Ruins” has the disc’s loveliest vocal line, with its trilling, melancholy refrain, an “and oh…” that cascades and curls with surpassing grace. The title track, “Outsiders” is a ghostly folk song about the moon landing, full of wonder and poetry. “Astrovan” is a ruminative waltz, framed by terse guitar chords and flowery piano flourishes and infused with regret. All work with a precision that doesn’t entirely dispel mystery, and all suggest obliquely rather than spelling things out. In any case, it should not be surprising that Tivel has a way with compression. Her last, 2019’s The Question, included songs about a gender transition and an immigrant child making a border crossing, both recounted in spare but evocative language, without cheap shots or soapboxing. Not many people are making folk songs as beautiful and rich as this. Don’t miss out on Outsiders. — dusted


   


Track List:
01 - Outsiders
02 - Black Umbrella
03 - Astrovan
04 - Heroes
05 - Two Dark Horses
06 - Royal Blue
07 - Ruins
08 - The Dial
09 - Invisible Man
10 - The Basement
11 - The Bell


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk
Country: Portland, Oregon, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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