Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (Fluff and Gravy) (13th Floor Album Review)
Anna Tivel has always blurred the line between songwriting and poetry. With each record she refines her ability to draw whole worlds in her lyrical stories, finding light and sorrow in equal measure.
Small Believer and The Question were collections of vivid portraits, while Outsiders widened the lens into band driven Americana, and Living Thing embraced a folk-rock warmth without losing the quiet intimacy of her voice. Her new album Animal Poem, co-produced with Sam Weber, feels like the culmination of that arc. Recorded live in a circle with friends, the production draws us close. We hear the breath between phrases, the slide of fingers across strings, the shimmer of cymbals receding into silence. It is musical poetry, and the sonics suit both the strength and the brittleness of the words.
Weber’s role is more than technical; he moves between co-producer, engineer, and fellow musician, taking care of the set up and then slipping into the ensemble with guitar lines that vanish inside the songs. That collaborative immediacy shapes the sparse folk sound of Animal Poem. Unlike the carefully polished atmospheres of The Question or the sweeping cinematic textures of Outsiders, here everything feels present and fragile. It is a record where each musician is listening as much as playing, and that immediacy and focus draws us all closer.
The opening track Holy Equation sets this tone. Two guitars trade chords so closely you hear the friction of strings. Tivel’s voice rises above them, steady and exposed, as she sings earnestly and ironically of God; “God bless my neighbours” and later “If God exists, that math is holy.” A saxophone stumbles in, jazzy and off-balance, circling the melody like a drunken witness. The song becomes a hymn to survival when poverty and kindness coexist.
The album unfolds as a meditation on love, mortality, and memory. Title track Animal Poem begins with a drum pulse matched by her whispering vocal. It circles around the idea that “you can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else,” framing courage as persistence in chaos. The calm authority of the line is heightened by the gently brushed guitar strings, and by keys and percussion that swell and retreat.
Driven by snare and bass, the song Meantime describes a family scarred by violence before turning to a vow: “I’m gonna love you, in the meantime, til the gold light ends.” The words present love as an act of endurance amid brokenness; the music holds the tension between brutality and tenderness.
Other songs widen the canvas into landscapes of time and loss. Badlands is a slow road song where drums, keys, and voice move deliberately, and fleeting beauty and travel are evoked through images of sandstone, hubcaps, and startled birds in flight. The journey becomes a mirror for mortality, reminding us that wisdom often arrives just before the horizon. White Goose grieves a childhood memory of shooting a bird, transforming it into a wider meditation on ecological grief. The image of “the ghost of everything we loved” hovers over the song, linking personal guilt to the larger devastation of wildfire and climate collapse.
Tivel’s weaving of history, music, and personal voice feels especially poignant in Hough Ave, 1966. With minimal instrumentation, voice and bass carrying the weight, she recalls the Cleveland uprising and the sound of Nina Simone on the radio: “On the cab ride home, that song was playing / Don’t let me be misunderstood.” The lyric grounds us in time, reminding us how Simone’s plea for empathy became the soundtrack to a city on edge. Later Tivel sings “Human kindness is overflowing / Miss Simone made me believe,” shifting from a specific song to Simone as a prophet, her music carrying hope for those seeking justice.
Throughout the record intimacy and fragility are as much sonic choices as lyrical subjects. Paradise (Is in the Mind) layers sparse keys, fret squeaks, and late-night jazz inflections, building toward noisy swells before collapsing into near silence. Airplane to Nowhere carries nightclub swing, reverberating guitar, and shimmering percussion. Fluorescence in the Future rises and falls on quietly crashing cymbals and surging chords, its refrain asking “Is there something else you meant to say?” The closing The Humming returns to stillness, keys ringing quietly as Tivel sings “what if that bright humming is all there ever was,” leaving the listener suspended in a fragile vibration.
Across these ten songs Tivel returns to the sacredness of the ordinary, to love as a daily act of care, to memories of violence that echo through generations, and to the shadow of mortality. These themes are carried by the small sounds: the rustle of strings, the faint tremor of a voice, the attentive hush of listening musicians. For Tivel the words and music point to salvation, transforming chaos and grief into meaning and beauty, whether through Simone’s song in Cleveland or the humming that outlasts the silence.
John Bradbury
Animal Poem is out now. Click here to listen and buy.
