Music Review: Anna Tivel, ‘Outsiders (Live in a Living Room)’
The Oregon-based singer/songwriter's sweet, dreamy vocals and masterful songwriting make her seventh album a must-listen. We reviewed the August 2023 release in anticipation of Tivel’s Dec. 1 Turf Club show in St. Paul with Joe Pug.
Anna Tivel’s Outsiders (Live in a Living Room) album artwork
Anna Tivel is a prolific and award-winning artist, having won both the prestigious Telluride Troubadour Songwriting Award and the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Competition, but I first encountered her music only recently, after hearing her October 2023 interview with Joe Pug on his podcast The Working Songwriter. I was inspired by the interview and immediately overcome by her songwriting and performance on her latest record, which came out this past August.
Outsiders (Live in a Living Room), Tivel’s seventh album, is an acoustic companion to her more elaborately produced 2022 album Outsiders. Tivel said she got the idea from Lucinda Williams’ Blessed, a double album where one half is an all acoustic version of the other. I love this idea and love that Tivel has given us this opportunity to hear her songs in a stripped-down form.
The album begins with the title track and an explosion of lyrics and ambient visions, perfectly delivered: “Imagine the very first man on the moon, watching the earth rising up / Out of the darkness cerulean blue, water and thunder and dust.” I could already tell this album would be a treat. The song goes on to convey how sincerely optimistic we can be about our similarities from a distance: “Outsiders look up / It turns out we are not so different.”
The second song on the album, “Black Umbrella,” is my favorite. It’s a pinnacle of storytelling through song. My words won't do it justice; you just need to hear it. I’ve listened to it probably 20 times in the past month, and new visions and realizations occur to me each time. Different people from different backgrounds have become the protagonist in my mind’s eye, and the story just keeps filling out with meaning. For instance, is the black umbrella a physical object or a metaphor? The answer is what you choose. It’s truly a masterpiece.
Something that struck me with this song is how elaborately Tivel describes the details throughout the story using such colorful and poetic language, and then, at what might be the climax, the instruments become quiet and she simply states “…and then you were not moving.” As if to open the song up enough for us to participate in the scene. You see the moments and you feel them. Tivel’s vividly cinematic storytelling lyrics should earn this song serious consideration on Rotten Tomatoes; I’d say it deserves at least a 98%.
There are so many great tracks on this album, but another standout is “American Novella,” a touching song of an older person in their last days and moments of life. In the middle of the song, we realize it’s a story within a story: The narrator is that person’s younger neighbor. She delivers some of the album’s most wrenching lyrics:
I want a baby, but I’m scared to let it grow inside of me
Where there’s been lonely emptiness and truths I’ve struggled to believe
Oh, but emptiness is easy, I know there's more to be
The contrast of these two lives is intense, and as with many of the songs on this album, seems to be a close-up of the title track, allowing us to feel the struggles taking place beneath this cerulean blue.
Anna Tivel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
I mentioned earlier that Joe Pug’s interview with Tivel is how I was introduced to her. I seldom take the time to listen to the music of an interviewee on a podcast, but Tivel seemed different and endeared herself to me. She seems soft-spoken, open, and honest, and I loved hearing her story. She had a fairly quiet childhood in a small farming town in Washington state and didn’t realize music would be her path until later in life. She always had a lot of feelings and didn’t have a great way of getting them out until she began performing her songs for others.
People seemed to understand what she was saying through her singing more than they ever did through talking, Tivel explained. She’s drawn to songwriting as a means of asking deeper and deeper questions, kind of as a devotion, as she makes her way through understanding life. She enjoys songwriting simply as a way of being as opposed to a means to an end. She takes in the details of her days and they ultimately bubble up to a song.
Sometimes the world can feel a bit hollow and hopeless, Tivel went on to say, but in a song, it’s the most elevated it can be, and exploring things in that way makes you see the world from that light more often. This value of songwriting as a way to enrich life and enhance its meaning is something to which I relate completely. Maybe that’s one reason I was compelled to listen to her songs and why I love them so much. Tivel has truly opened my mind to what a song can be and I am grateful.
After getting attached to her music, I looked up Tivel’s tour stops, hoping she would be coming to the Twin Cities this year. And what a surprise, I already had a ticket to see her, opening for Joe Pug at the Turf Club on Friday, December 1st! Joe Pug is one of a handful of artists I've been anxiously waiting to see this year. I’m thankful to them both for teaming up and saving me some cash so I can buy more merch! I hope you enjoy their tunes as well, and I hope to see you there!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacson Miller. Photo courtesy of the author.
Jacson Miller is a huge fan of great Americana music and the songwriters who create it. He is a passionate supporter of equity in education and youth development as a Board Member of the nonprofit ‘Search Institute’. A long-time resident of Minneapolis, he grew up in southern Indiana, has a Business degree from Purdue University, an MBA from Duke University, and loves being a dad, playing guitar, and songwriting.
