Video Premiere: Anna Tivel, “Outsiders”
The songs that come from Anna Tivel are always thoughtful and emotionally intelligent. There’s a lightness to them—possibly due to the airiness of her vocals, but also the sparse poetry of her
lyrics and the way she fills in music around them. Rather than saturate her soundscapes, she offers just enough of a pillow for the songs to jump and land.
Indeed, jumping and landing is what she says came to mind when she listened back to the title track from her new album Outsiders, (due Aug. 19 from Mama Bird Recording Co.).
“When I listened back to the way the [title track] was recorded, all raw and live to tape in a circle of good friends,” she says, “it made me feel weightless and free and I wanted to capture that emotion in video form. I found a cheap old trampoline on Craigslist and sewed these ridiculous fluttery red pants with visions of slow motion flying up high enough to look back from a great distance at the whole strugglesome and stunning thing.”
The idea of looking back on the world from a distance came to her initially when she was watching a documentary about the flight of Apollo 11. She was interested in the way it must have felt for the astronauts to see the Earth rise on the horizon for the first time. The thoughts and feelings that invoked for her captured so much of what the new album contains.
Outsiders, she says, “is a meditation on otherness, a deep dive into the myriad forces that keep us from connecting in real ways, and a celebration of the ones that draw us together. … These songs are meant as a small prayer of recognition for loneliness and love, and all the ways we try and fail—and try again—to see each other clearly and let ourselves be seen.”
Press play on this premiere of the song and video for “Outsiders,” and imagine the world anew.
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“Outsiders” is the title track from Anna Tivel’s new album, out on August 19. It’s available HERE.
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