Ana Roxanne - Poem 1

Ana Roxanne returns with Poem 1, an album that displays a new-found boldness and arrives on kranky.

THE GUARDIAN - “Keepsake” included in tracks of the week (20th Feb) “devastatingly
stark… suffused in grief”

"I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere,"Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie
suspended drone on "The Age of Innocence". "I wanted to try / And go very far."
These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a
conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album,
Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago.

Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and
displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer
shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered
electroacoustic textures.

Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and
songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent
her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her
anguished siren song on "Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45", making each word count.
On "Keepsake" meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar,
stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's
a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never
wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting
out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. "Untitled II", the
album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise
that's been present since her first EP, 2019's ~~~. "

And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied "Stille Tränen" on "One Shall
Sleep", she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief,
narrating the 19th century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light
emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout '"Cover
Me", Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on 'Atonement', lifting her voice into a
gentle lilt.

press quotes for previous album Because of a Flower:
''The Californian musician seems to ponder the mutability of gender on her second
album, which offers a magical out-of-body experience'' 4/5 The Guardian
"Because of a Flower gives us a glimpse into a very specific world of sound —
aquatic, earthen, and airborne, all at once — and it is a treat to get lost in.” - Beats
Per Minute

“It feels like bathing in moonlight.” - PitchforkTracklist: 

1. The Age of Innocence 2. Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45 3. Keepsake 4. x
5. Untitled II 6. One Shall Sleep 7. Wishful (draft) 8. Cover Me 9. Atonement

Format: vinyl LP
Label: Kranky
Genre: Ambient/Experimental
Condition: New
Catalogue Number: KRANK252LP
Barcode: 796441825219

If unsealed, we ship records with the LP outside the sleeve to avoid seam splits.