I’ve had a busy week and I’m looking forward to some much needed relaxation. Let’s start that off with an album review. I mean, you’re here, I’m here. At this point it just feels inevitable.
Disc 1408 is…. The Question
Artist: Anna Tivel
Year of Release: 2019
What’s up with the Cover? A person standing on a ridge, except the picture is upside down. Why is this picture upside down? That is “the question” for me. This reminded me a bit of the cover of the Kyuss album “…and the Circus Leaves Town” (reviewed back at Disc 505) only way less interesting.
How I Came To Know It: Tivel’s 2017 album “Small Believer” was incredible so I gave this one a shot when it came out hoping for more of the same.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Anna Tivel albums, and if you are following along you know what they are. Of the two, I rank “the Question” at #2 but it is super close as they are both amazing records. More of the same, indeed.
Ratings: 4 stars
Anna Tivel’s “the Question” is not for all occasions. It’s not for driving your car. It’s not for background while you’re cooking dinner or cleaning the coffee table. It is most definitely not for parties (assuming at some future point we’re allowed to have those again). But if you give this record your full attention, and let its beauty steal its way into the quiet places of your soul, you will be glad you did.
Tivel sings with a small but powerful voice, almost whispering in places; a gossamer thread of sound that leads you through the night and into the lives of the characters she inhabits.
Those characters reveal their stories in the first person, and Tivel subsumes herself so completely into them so as to disappear completely, rebirthed as someone else for three to five minutes. In that short time span she manages to capture the essence of people as disparate as an illegal immigrant sneaking across the Mexican border, a janitor and sometimes – for a few intimate moments – a private part of herself. Her talent for character is so great, however, that you’re never sure if that latter experience is hers or just another, more subtle character study.
Around these ‘voices’ she twines sights and sounds that serve to underscore the mood of every song. Usually this is some version of wistful yearning, which in lesser hands could grow tiresome over time. In the hands of Tivel, it does not; it leaves you wanting more.
The production is to match, with sparseness and air between the notes to spare. Even when the music swells, it swells like a wave with no whitecap. The greater glory is to be had with what’s under the surface, if you can only quell your own restlessness long enough to look below.
It is hard to pick favourites on a record this good (you’ll see I’ve listed 6 of the 10 songs in the “best tracks” section below). That said, “Figure It Out” is particularly powerful, a song about love and vulnerability and the bravery to say you’re sorry and work it out. So many great images exist in this frail evocative tune, but here are a few:
“A siren, a catfight, a thin clarinet
The neighbours reflect in a blue TV set
And you’ve got a way of believing the rest will work out.”
The song is so quiet, you can hear Tivel breathing even as you hold your own, fearing you’ll break the spell with the resulting susurrus.
Another standout is “Velvet Curtain” which features a janitor who once had dreams of fame, now reduced to singing into her broom handle as she cleans up the empty theatre at the end of the night:
“The night circled in like a dog in the alley
All matted and skinny and face full of hurt
And the theatre still ringing with lost dreams of glory
The echoing voices of some brighter world.
“And I sang to the mezzanine, the gold-plated ceiling
The orchestra spinning, the bright chandelier
I sang so the angels would feel what I’m feeling
An empty so deep I’m afraid I’m not here.”
The song ends with a bittersweet victory, as a homeless man creeps into the back of the theatre while our narrator is singing, to clap and thank the singer for the song that lifted him when he most needed it.
Here, and elsewhere on the record, I was struck with Tivel’s natural feel for the strange connections between even people who don’t know each other. “Two Strangers” is the ultimate expression of this; a song where the strangers never even meet, but as one flies out of the city, they can feel the eyes of the other looking up from below.
As the final notes fade on this song (the last on the record) I always feel my heart has grown, Grinch-like, threatening to burst its way out of my chest. It hurts a little, but it is a good hurt, on a record that finds optimism and joy nestled in even the darkest places.
Best tracks: The Question, Figure It Out, Minneapolis, Anthony, Velvet Curtain, Two Strangers
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