Portland, Oregon’s Anna Tivel is set to return with the first project since her widely acclaimed album The Question, which NPR Music called “One Of The Most Ambitious Folk Records Of 2019.” In February of 2021, Tivel collaborated with Portland musician friends Galen Clark and Micah Hummel to reimagine a collection of songs from previous releases and record one new track, “Two Dark Horses,” from an album coming next year. The resulting project, Blue World, is a sparse and winding exploration of loneliness and love played out on keys, percussion, and one quiet voice.
Blue World is due out July 16, 2021 via Fluff & Gravy Records and available for pre-order now at Bandcamp. Of the new project, Tivel offers, “We chose the songs by story and feel and played them in all directions for hours on end in Galen’s basement in our coats and masks. We wanted them sparse and strange, isolated and alive. Each of these songs exists in another form, from another time when making music shoulder to shoulder in goodsweaty rooms was an everyday adventure. In this year of strange and difficult isolation, I kept craving the sound of the piano, something warm and resonant to cure the vast empty. Galen and Micah agreed to create the sonic landscape, and I closed my eyes and imagined each scene in color as I sang. This project felt like breathing again, a chance to be together, to listen and express something with good friends whose music forever moves me.”
Blue World Tracklisting:
1) Alleyway
2) Minneapolis
3) Illinois
4) One Thousand & One
5) Two Dark Horses
6) Shadowland
7) Lillian & Martha
8) Riverside Hotel
9) Blue World
Tivel has also announced a string of summer tour dates to celebrate the release, including an album release show at Portland’s Stage 722 with all her Blue World collaborators.
Anna Tivel On Tour:
June 26 — Sisters Summer of Festival — Sisters, OR
July 9-11 — Redwing Folk Fest — Mt. Solon, VA
July 14 — Club Passim — Cambridge, MA
July 15 — Word Barn — Exeter, NH
July 22 — Stage 722 — Portland, OR
July 31 — Sou’wester — Long Beach, WA
September 3-5 — Nowhere Else Festival — Martinsville, OH
Photo by Matt Kennelly