ROUTES & BRANCHES 
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
April 14, 2019
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

by @vleephotographs

Back in 2017, we called Anna Tivel's Small Believer, "as beautiful an album as you're bound to hear this year", and placed it ceremoniously upon our favorites list for the year.  It was the sort of record that immediately put us on watch for the Portland singer-songwriter's next step.

Anna Tivel's fourth LP, The Question (Fluff & Gravy, Apr 19), continues to find meaning in moments of connection, the small gestures and glimpses that suggest a greater story.  Collaborating with producer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph, Tivel presents a bolder, more confident voice that leads her intimate contemporary folk music in new directions.

The CD's title track is born in the light falling from a glowing window, a figure lost in the everyday act of applying make-up.  The song is exquisitely built on a bed of brushed drums and woozy atmospherics, like smoke turned into music.  Tivel, eternally the voyeur witness, imagines a story: The neighbors never mention, the woman they see leaving / Is the man who works the morning shift selling gasoline.

Anna Tivel's songs are set firmly in the familiar trappings of folk, though The Question hints at some jazz touches as well, especially in the arrangements of pieces like "Minneapolis".  Acoustic guitar is joined by keys and strings and an expressive clarinet for a nearly theatrical setting.  The narrator sings languorously of a change in the season, a wind in the branches / The cold coming in like a drug.  Like Suzanne Vega, Tivel sings with a deceptive deadpan, though her new collection demonstrates she's capable of more.  The talk-singing of some tunes is contrasted with the relatively soaring chorus of "Minneapolis".

Tivel typically stands outside of these tableaux, a narrator of events more than a participant.  If there are political undertones to "Homeless Child" or "Fenceline", they are only implicit and never heavy handed.  The latter is a high-water mark in the artist's storytelling, a cinematic portrayal of a man alone in the dark at the edge of the border.  The song's strings stir up a drama and a tension that evolves into pathos with the chorus: Oh angels look away / Unbar the pearly gate, unblock the road / Cause down here at the border, I'm just an animal.

"Anthony" is a fine country-leaning folk number, its narrator wandering through a house afire, taking inventory of memories and treasures as they burn.  The song's melodic proceedings are enhanced with perfectly applied strings and tiny sonic touches that tip it towards a more rewarding return.  Credit the aforementioned Leonard and Joseph, as well as collaborators like Courtney Hartman on guitar, Ben Lester on keys and the wonderfully complimentary harmony vocals of longtime friend and fellow singer-songwriter Jeffrey Martin.  It's these subtle musical embellishments that speak to Anna Tivel's maturation as an artist, allowing her to grow beyond the still small voice of folk music.

Nowhere is this potential closer to realization than on "Worthless".  There's a touch of Tom Waits or Fiona Apple in the tune, surrounding Tivel with as much sound as we've heard from her music, from strings played in reverse to the squelchy sound of a bassline slowly burning.  Tivel's way with an overheard conversation or her attention to the details of a small life will always be her calling card, but these moments of pushing her comfort zone hint at possible directions for her future growth.  Even as she continues to wander darkened streets and to gaze up at the glow of late night windows, it's evident there's more to be heard from Anna Tivel's stories.

Two quarters in my hand, nothing else in my pocket / I'm a wild horse pawing at the cracked dead earth / The stoplight turning and a long white Lincoln / Goes screaming by, the bass line lingers ...

- Centro-matic, "Post-it Notes From the State Hospital" Redo the Stacks  (Navigational Transmissions, 96)
- David Quinn, "Three Quarter Time" Wandering Fool  (Quinn, 19)
- Kasey Chambers, "Hey Girl" The Captain (Deluxe Edition)  (EMI Australia, May 17)  D
- Drunken Prayer, "Into the Water" Cordelia Elsewhere  (Deer Lodge, 19)
- Jimbo Mathus, "Alligator Fish" Incinerator  (Big Legal Mess, 19)
- Shovels & Rope, "C'mon Utah" By Blood  (Dualtone, 19)
- John Paul White, "Heart Like a Kite" Hurting Kind  (Single Lock, 19)
- Damien Jurado, "Newspaper Gown" In the Shape of a Storm  (Mama Bird, 19)
- JJ Grey & Mofro, "Sweetest Thing" Georgia Warhorse  (Alligator, 10)
- Left Lane Cruiser, "Two Dollar Elvis" Shake and Bake  (Alive Naturalsound, May 31)
- Molly Tuttle, "Make Up My Mind" When You're Ready  (Compass, 19)
- Matt Andersen, "Bed I Made" Halfway Home by Morning  (True North, 19)
- Yawpers, "Carry Me" Human Question  (Bloodshot, 19)
- Shouting Matches, "Three Dollar Bill" Grownass Men  (Middle West, 13)
- Bohannons, "Sleep Rock" Bloodroot  (Cornelius Chapel, 19)
- Prescriptions, "She is Waiting" Hollywood Gold  (Single Lock, 19)
- Son Volt, "Slow Burn" Union  (Transmit Sound, 19)
- Amanda Anne Platt & Honeycutters, "To Love Somebody (live)" Live at the Grey Eagle  (Organic, May 24)
- Viking Moses, "Pretty Little Eyes" Cruel Child  (Epifo, 19)
- Daniel Norgren, "Rolling Rolling Rolling" Wooh Dang  (Superpuma, Apr 19)
- Buddy & Julie Miller, "Secret" Breakdown on 20th Ave South  (New West, Jun 21)
- J Roddy Walston, "Caroline" J Roddy Walston & the Business  (Vagrant, 10)
- Jamestown Revival, "Harder Way" San Isabel  (Jamestown, Jun 14)
- Courtney Marie Andrews, "Rough Around the Edges" May Your Kindness Remain (Acoustic)  (Fat Possum, 19)
- Tyler Ramsey, "Cheap Summer Dress" For the Morning  (Fantasy, 19)
- Shelby Lynne, "Your Lies" I Am Shelby Lynne  (Concord, 00)
- Josh Ritter, "All Some Kind of Dream" Fever Breaks  (Pytheas, Apr 26)
- Desure, "West Wind (Stay Here Awhile)" Desure  (Tuxedo, May 3)  D
- Frankie Lee, "Downtown Lights" Stillwater  (Frankie Lee, May 24)  D
- Nick Lowe, "Trombone" Love Starvation/Trombone EP  (Yep Roc, Jun 21)

Your Routes & Branches Guide To Feedin' Your Monster features new additions this week from Swedish-American blues guitarist Anders Osborne as well as a debut from Josh Desure (who performs as Desure (and who used to manage Midland)).  We add a deluxe 20th anniversary release of Kasey Chambers' debut, The Captain.  Nice to see a late June announcement for Matt Woods Natural Disasters, and Rodney Crowell has scheduled his forthcoming record of collaborations, Texas, for August.  And Pine Mountain Sessions is a double album that pulls together some of Kentucky's finest writers and musicians in support of the state's Natural Lands Trust - folks like Jim James, Nathan Salsburg, Wendell Berry and Catherine Irwin.  Color me intrigued.