Kranky
Ana Roxanne - Poem 1 Ana Roxanne
Ana Roxanne returns with Poem 1, an album that displays a new-found boldness and arrives on kranky May 1st.
THE GUARDIAN - “Keepsake” included in tracks of the week (20th Feb) “devastatingly stark… suffused in grief”
"I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere,"Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on "The Age of Innocence". "I wanted to try / And go very far." These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago.
Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures.
Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on "Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45", making each word count.
On "Keepsake" meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. "Untitled II", the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP, 2019's ~~~. "
And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied "Stille Tränen" on "One Shall Sleep", she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief, narrating the 19th century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout '"Cover Me", Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on 'Atonement', lifting her voice into a gentle lilt.
press quotes for previous album Because of a Flower:
''The Californian musician seems to ponder the mutability of gender on her second album, which offers a magical out-of-body experience'' 4/5 The Guardian
"Because of a Flower gives us a glimpse into a very specific world of sound — aquatic, earthen, and airborne, all at once — and it is a treat to get lost in.” - Beats Per Minute
“It feels like bathing in moonlight.” - Pitchfork
Track List
1. The Age of Innocence
2. Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45
3. Keepsake
4. x
5. Untitled II
6. One Shall Sleep
7. Wishful (draft)
8. Cover Me
9. Atonement
Pickup available at Cambridge
Usually ready in 24 hours. Unless it's a Pre-Order
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