featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
June 9, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
As we inch ever cautiously towards the Summer months, we'll remind readers of our habit to identify our favorite records of the first half of the year as June turns to July. We'll share that list for our June 30 Episode, so please plan appropriately. We'll do our part.
Sometime over the past nearly one-thousand reviews here at R&B HQ, we likely commented about popular music's expectations of female artists. Same goes for the americana community. We praise our female artists for making pretty music, a superlative we rarely apply to male artists. And while we regularly call music by male artists edgy, cerebral, irreverent, cathartic, confrontational, etc etc, these are rarely expectations we place on female artists. Sure it's an overstatement, and exceptions exist, but by and large it's not untrue.
Which is why at R&B we never make gender-based lists, or comment on the best female singer-songwriters. As much as possible, we make efforts to compare female with male artists, and vice versa. Gender identity can be hugely important with regard to personal expression, but it's never our intention to ghettoize artists because of their gender.
<dismounts from soap box>
Anna Tivel makes music that matters. Since her 2014 debut, she's created folk music that is never beholden to tradition, acoustic music that pushes boundaries and defies expectations. Tivel's vocal cool remove might be likened to Suzanne Vega or Anais Mitchell, maybe Adrianne Lenker, not your usual vehicle for the genre but perfect for her observational, reporterly sort of lyricism. Especially since her 2017 Small Believer sessions, Anna Tivel has increasingly strayed from a trad expression of folk music. With 2019's The Question and 2022's Outsiders, she began a collaboration with producer/instrumentalist Shane Leonard about whom she has commented, he just gets so excited about sounds and he has lots of vision for drawing things out of normal folk song landscapes ... Tivel and Leonard have convened once more for Living Thing (Fluff & Gravy), probably the artist's most notable departure.
Our previous reviews of Anna Tivel's records have praised the songwriter's use of voice and perspective, a lyrical stance that places the narrator in the midst of a moment while maintaining a journalistic distance. Living Thing is Tivel's pandemic record, written during the plague years. She has mentioned that these new songs were written as though through one single window on the world. On the percussive, angular "Altogether Alone", she sings of the shared experience of isolation: Everything changing, and all that remains is you're altogether alone. Unable to travel, to work, even to connect, we took a strange comfort in our common straits. "Desperation" enters with treated percussion and a slightly off-kilter arrangement, suggesting: Close your eyes and go somewhere ... Real life is far from fair ... It's like somebody rigged the whole damn thing. Tivel's singing rises for the chorus, stretching and bending the one word in a way that brings to mind freedom and escape.
Tivel has spoken about Shane Leonard's distinct role on Living Thing, maybe more of a collaboration than anything I've ever made. With her own ear towards lyrics and melody, the producer encouraged sonic texture and arrangement in the songs, together creating an album that Tivel calls rhythmic and vital, with more melody and soaring chorus. "Disposable Camera" is injected with an 80s alt.pop spirit, a song that also boasts the singer's first scream/shout on record: You learn how to scream when the train comes in / And you feel a weight like you've never felt. "Silver Flame" speaks to this same melodic streak, built on a digital reverb and a few beautifully ringing guitar notes. Leonard's production only raises the profile of Tivel's songs, at times even inviting the singer to challenge herself vocally. "Real Things" almost recalls Patty Griffin as Tivel surveys the world through her window: I thought I could fly through / All these feelings, all these real things / Without needing anyone.
In some ways it almost seems we've already begun to forget the radical ways in which our lives changed during the Covid years: Howling from our window at 8pm; the eerie emptiness of the city streets; the sheer smallness of a life lived between four walls. Anna Tivel is hardly the first to present a project exploring these pandemic realities. Amidst its kaleidoscopic swell, "Bluebird" sings of Trying to find the brightness in a world of dying embers / Walking late at night with all the junkies and dead flowers, while "Kindness Of a Liar" begs for signs of hope with violin and gentle piano. For two years, we were a society, a world communally floundering (to use Tivel's words), the deep familiarity of our lives become almost alien.
The jacket for Living Thing, a stirring illustration by Heather Layton, depicts an assortment of figures, each engaged in an embrace. More than any other songwriter, Anna Tivel's work addresses moments of connection, coming together and not coming together. On her new sixth collection, her music is eloquent in its expression and unblinking in its observation. Is the truth that our pandemic reality wasn't so much a departure from reality as it was a magnifying glass on human nature? Tivel's collection closes with "Gold Web", a piece enveloped in the sound of rain (so appropriate of Tivel's Portland home). She sings of A scarecrow scared of wanting, so afraid to be reaching, as the record closes with the sound of approaching thunder.
ROUTES-cast June 9, 2024
- Jesse Daniel, "Golden State Rambler" Countin' the Miles (Lightning Rod, 24)
- Margo Price, "Ways To Be Wicked (ft Mike Campbell)" Petty Country (Big Machine, Jun 21)
- JP Harris, "Old Fox" JP Harris Is a Trash Fire (Bloodshot, Sep 20) D
- Kaitlin Butts, "Come Rest Your Head (ft Vince Gill)" Roadrunner! (Butts, Jun 28)
- Johnny Cash, "Spotlight (ft Dan Auerbach)" Songwriter (UMG, Jun 28)
- Zach Bryan, "Purple Gas (ft Noeline Hofmann)" Great American Bar Scene (Belting Bronco, 24)
- Good Looks, "Desert" Lived Here For a While (Keeled Scales, 24)
^ Anna Tivel, "Real Things" Living Thing (Fluff & Gravy, 24)
- Will Stewart, "Bad Memory (live)" Live In Norway (Cornelius Chapel, 24)
- Little Wings, "Brutal North Pillow" High On the Glade (Perpetual Doom, 24)
- Laney Jones, "Say Yes" single (AHPO, 24) D
- Erin Rae, "On Her Side" single (Independent, 24) D
- Rose Hotel, "King and a Pawn" A Pawn Surrender (Strolling Bones, 24)
- Donovan Woods, "116 West Main Durham NC" Things Were Never Good If They're Not Good Now (End Times, Jul 12)
- Bonny Doon, "Clock Keeps Ticking" single (Anti, 24) D
- Bonny Light Horseman, "Tumblin Down" Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free (Jagjaguwar, 24)
- Chapin Sisters, "Wasting Your Time" single (Chapin, 24) D
- Kiely Connell, "Through To You" My Own Company (Calumet Queen, Jul 19)
- Karen Jonas, "Gold In the Sand" Rise and Fall Of American Kitsch (Yellow Brick, Aug 9)
- Boy Golden, "Burn" For Eden (Six Shooter, Jul 19)
- Bella White, "Concrete and Barbed Wire" Five For Silver EP (Rounder, Aug 16) D
- Tony Trischka, "Amazing Grace (ft Sierra Ferrell)" Earl Jam (Down the Road, 24) D
- Shovels & Rope, "Love Song From a Dog (ft Gregory Alan Isakov)" Something Is Working Up Above My Head (Dualtone, Sep 6) D
- The Dip, "Fill My Cup" Love Direction (Dualtone, Jul 12) D
- Staples Jr Singers, "I've Got a Feeling" Searching (Luaka Bop, Jun 14)
- Aaron Frazer, "Dime (ft Cancamusa)" Into the Blue (Dead Oceans, Jun 28)
- Nathaniel Rateliff & Night Sweats, "Get Used To the Night" South Of Here (Stax, Jun 28)
- Left Lane Cruiser, "Crazy Love" Bayport BBQ Blues (Alive Natural Sound, 24)
- Steve Wynn, "Make It Right" Make It Right (Fire, Aug 30) D
- Drive-by Truckers, "Mystery Song (2024 Mix)" Southern Rock Opera (20th Anniversary) (Lost Highway, Aug 2)
Please take a moment from your busy day to look into A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster. It's our obsessively curated calendar of forthcoming releases in our kind of music. Since we last convened, we've added the new project by Sturgill Simpson, who famously declared his 2021 LP the last he'd release under his own name. Keeping that promise, Sturgill has announced a July 12 street date for Passage Du Desir, his first collection under the moniker of Johnny Blue Skies (High Top Mt). Bella White's 2023 Among Other Things was among of favorites for the year. Her next project, Five For Silver, is a covers EP, featuring her take on songs originally by Lucinda, Emmylou, Ted Lucas and others (Rounder, Aug 16). Very pleased to announce the return of Shovels & Rope for a September 6 LP. Something Is Working Up Above My Head is slated to appear courtesy of their Dualtone label. Iconic New York singer-songwriter Jesse Malin has shared news of a tribute album with proceeds to allay medical expenses resulting from his tragic paralysis. Due September 20 on the Glassnote label, Silver Patron Saints will include contributions from Springsteen, Spoon, Hold Steady and many more. Finally, after some time with the Free Dirt label, JP Harris' next record will be released by the resurgent Bloodshot Records. JP Harris Is a Trash Fire is planned for a September 20 street date.
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