Anna Tivel

Here we are. Mysterious humanity unfolding. Animal nature howling. How do we learn what it means? Maybe being here is a story told by all of us at once, a constant reaching for language, an impossible telling of something inherently indescribable. Animal Poem is a meditation on the attempt. How do we talk about destiny from the balcony of a nation in decline? How does our attention shape the way we touch the natural world? In the face of endless avarice and cruelty, how do we talk about the realness of love? Recorded live in a circle with some of my dearest friends, Animal Poem was made in conversation. We wanted to be together in the room, to listen and respond in real time without the separation of walls and headphones. Everyone in the studio made it feel so open, made it easy to forget technology and permanence and just play, messy and alive. It’s this vital mess that moves me when I listen now – ghost notes in the high register of the piano, melodic guitar and bass lines briefly interwoven, earthy cymbals breathing, my dog barking. 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. This album is my own small addition to the communal story. The water we swim in. The way our attention molds our truths. Humanity is unfolding as we describe it. We’ll never get it right, but the attempt is everything.