As the world faced pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Oregonian folk musician Anna Tivel took the year as an opportunity to simply observe the slow passing of time and write “everything from the same window.”
Today, those writings come together to form “Living Thing,” Tivel’s sixth studio album. The record released Friday includes singles such as “Disposable Camera” and “Bluebird.” According to the musician, the album is “an attempt to capture the strange chaos of that year with the resulting songs feeling rhythmic and vital, with more melody and soaring chorus than I’ve explored in the past.”
The artist, who moved to Portland from La Conner, Washington, when she was 18, is currently signed with the city’s own Fluff & Gravy Records. “Living Thing” follows Tivel’s 2022 critically acclaimed album, “Outsiders,” and she was also featured on an episode of NPR’s Tiny Desk.
Tivel recently announced a tour and is slated for a performance and an album signing session at Portland’s Music Millennium on Friday. The session opens to the public at 5 p.m. The singer-songwriter will also perform at Pickathon this August.
Tivel sat down with OPB earlier this month to take us through the creative process that went into producing “Living Thing.” Below are excerpts from the interview, edited for clarity and length:
Prakruti Bhatt: You’ve mentioned that “Living Thing” is an attempt to capture the strange chaos of 2020. Tell me more about that.
Anna Tivel: Yeah, I wrote all the songs in that first year of the pandemic, and really being stationary, not in motion for the first time in a long time, and writing everything from the same window and watching the neighborhood and the city and the country and the world go through this thing. But watching it from a very stationary place, it feels like a postcard from that moment in time, I think.
Bhatt: What were some of your favorite moments and also your most challenging moments from this whole process?
Tivel: It was a really different and singular record making process. I made it just with my friend, Shane Leonard in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He produced and played most of the instruments, and we really just holed up for a month and got as strange and far out there as we could and tried everything. And it was maybe more a collaboration than anything I’ve ever made. And a lot of his heart and his voice and his musicality drew all the songs into his orbit, which felt really exciting and new and fun.
Bhatt: This is your sixth studio record of new music. How has your approach to songwriting evolved over the years?
Tivel: The work of it is always shifting and changing. And I love that about songwriting because you’re trying to get at ways to express things and ways to get at truths that you feel in your heart and that you see in the world. And you’ll never quite get there, but you’re always trying a little more, a little more. And it’s this never-ending work that I think I really believe in, and just making my way through that, always.
Bhatt: Speaking of truth, what inspired you to write “Two Truths?”
Anna Tivel (center) performs with her band on May 1, 2024, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Parish in downtown Portland.
Cameron Nielsen / OPB
Tivel: That’s a song just really trying to think about how difficult it is to let a lot of things be true at once, and to hold them in your mind and in your heart. And I think maybe it feels safer to have things be black and white, and this is the whole truth and nothing else is true. But I think maybe everything is just a multitude of nuances. And especially at this moment in time, it seems like we have a hard time letting that be that way.
Bhatt: You sing in the song, “You put on a song, you can feel the record is forever changing.” I know it can mean so many things, but do you have some song or record that brings you back to that point in time?
Related: Anna Tivel performs at Type Foundry Studio
Tivel: Yeah. I think I find a lot in artists that changed a lot over time, or somebody like Nina Simone, or something that she really explored a lot of different avenues in her artistry and in her voice and in her playing. And that feels like that to me. People, whether or not they’re doing it artistically or just in the world, are on this journey to try to understand things. And it draws you back over and over again. And you get a little further, and it draws you back. And it feels like this big wheel, maybe.
Bhatt: Finally, what’s different about “Living Thing” compared to “Outsiders,” your last record?
Tivel: I think it has a lot more groove. Yeah, my friend Shane really went out on a more movable grooveful limb, I think. And it was a really fun process. And it drew the songs into a zone that I don’t know I’ve explored yet with my music, but getting to play them live now... is exciting. It feels like a different way to move your body and to move your spirit.