Anna Tivel’s latest dropped the day after my birthday, which was one of those angsty ones that ends in a zero. Such a nice birthday present, even though whenever I listen to it I find myself on the verge of tears. To be fair, I generally get weepy when I listen to any of her records, but the songs on Animal Poem are right up there with her most poignant. Anna’s songs are a perfect balm in troubling times, and seriously, when haven’t we been in troubling times since about 2016 — coincidentally when Fluff & Gravy released Anna’s sophomore disc Heroes Waking Up, one of my favorite albums of the decade. Small Believer, the follow-up, is not far behind.
Anna generally records with a small circle of players who are friends, and this album is no exception but maybe even more so. She and co-producer and guitarist Sam Weber huddled with the duo who have been her tour band for a couple of years now, keyboardist Galen Clark and drummer Micah Hummel. (They’re two thirds of the Dan Balmer Trio, a Portland jazz institution. About a year ago now I saw Anna with just Clark and Hummel at a little coffee house a stone’s throw from the Oregon Capitol, and guessed that they were jazz players before I found out who they were.) Also in the circle was Nashville bassist Sam Howard, who although he’s mainly a country and Americana player, also has a strong jazz feel to his playing here.
“We wanted to be together in the room, to listen and respond in real time without the separation of walls and headphones,” she says of the sessions. “Everyone in the studio made it feel so open, made it easy to forget technology and permanence and just play, messy and alive. … We came back to add saxophone, strings, vocal harmonies, and a few other tastes, but most of what you hear is just people sitting together in a small room, listening and talking with tenderness and abandon.”
Anna does have a way with words, because “messy and alive,” “tenderness and abandon,” perfectly describe these songs and this record.
Mortality, life, dreams, the way we often fail to live up to our own expectations for ourselves, the way we need to forgive ourselves, these are constant themes in Tivel’s closely observed jewel box short stories put to music. The second single from Animal Poem, “Florescence In The Future,” has this and more. “There’s no way to avoid it, every engine has an end date / you are here and this is one day, another may be coming / lay your palm upon the table, every fortune you have handled / everything you loved and mangled, every thought you held so close your mind was changed …” Here’s the official video, but I encourage you to also check out her performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert from a couple of years ago, when this was the first of her four-song set.
Anna has always been a creative writer with a gift for the unexpected turn of a phrase (often as not, matched with an unexpected chord progression) that limns a close observation about human nature, and on Animal Poem she’s only sharper. The opening track “Holy Equation” is a good example with verses like this:
“God bless this city, I’ve just got to say this whole thing is really keeping me humble. The discount groceries and the timing belt trouble, I’m waking up early I’m busing the tables, this whole thing is really a hopeless equation, the math doesn’t add up there’s holes in the fabric of dreams, you see right through …” Which is followed by a delicate saxophone solo from L.A. jazz player Nicole McCabe.
But just drop the needle anywhere for more heart-rending balladry. The upbeat shuffle of “Airplane To Nowhere,” driven by Hummel’s brushed snare and Howard’s steady bass thrum, with searing distorted electric guitar fills from Weber. That feeling you get when an unexpected memory sweeps over you, in the hushed, mysterious “White Goose,” elevated by a spare piano solo. The anguish of a hoarder being crowded out of their home by stacks of stuff, their pain brought to life by a searing crescendo from the band. The steadfast lover in “Meantime” struggling to stay close: “In the madness of real life, I promise to do my best.”
“Every album is a snapshot, a momentary study of the way a mind reaches for understanding,” Anna says in the album notes. “I can feel myself reaching in these songs, for whatever is right beyond my grasp. Mortality and connection. Suffering and meaning.” Thanks to artists like Anna Tivel for helping us figure out how to deal with what we’re feeling, and pointing the way with compassion and humility.
(Fluff & Gravy, 2025)
