Released earlier this year via Fluff and Gravy Records, Anna Tivel‘s Animal Poem saw the Portland, Oregon-based songwriter emerge from a period of doubt, grappling with the utility and meaning of art in a world of violence, wild inequality and climate collapse. Through Tivel’s trademark ability to combine emotional heft and narrative immersion, the record addressed the topic not through handwringing or hard thinking, but practice. “[Animal Poem is] not so much an answer to this question as one artist’s small contribution towards one,” as we wrote in a preview. “A small piece of the colossal, communal whole demanded of us. The imperative to celebrate life and warn of its fragility. To remind everyone of just what we stand to lose should the malevolent forces of this world be allowed to grow.”
Building on the acclaim earned by Animal Poem, Anna Tivel is now set to return with a set of additional songs from the recording period. Fittingly titled Animal Poem B-Sides, the EP will not be released until next spring, though lead single ‘Swan Song’ shows the new tracks are just as evocative and finely crafted as their sisters on the main album. Described by Tivel as “a rumination on ephemerality and all the ways this life will move us before the whole thing flies away,” the song pairs a relaxed rhythm and poignant tone with something urgent beneath the surface, a loneliness hurried by the violent pressing of time. “The trumpeter swans leave the past in the fields / and head for a better unknown,” Tivel sings, “everything moving, a madness, an engine / flying down the road to forget that it’s ending / a star in the night is just air in the morning / up there burning alone / and you will be here ’til you’re gone.”