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Ann Annie is the moniker and ongoing project of Portland composer and multi-instrumentalist Eli Goldberg. His ambient sounds and textures have a film score quality, which often finds his music placed in the ever-evolving ambient country genre alongside the likes of New York-based Suss. Ann Annie’s 2022 album By Morning was described in a Bandcamp Daily as having a transcendental approach, a vibe that feels very present on their new single Silver Creek below, taken from the forthcoming album The Wind, due June 7th via Nettwerk.
While the banjo is given prominence in the opening of Silver Creek, providing it with a sparse alt-folk vibe, in just under two and a half minutes, the tune goes through several transformations without ever feeling forced or rushed. Despite evolving over a short space of time, it has a stretched and seamless quality, like the detailed time-lapse of an unravelling bloom. Sparse banjo notes are soon joined by keening pedal steel that introduces warm stretched swathes of sound before synths slowly emerge, dotting the soundscape with raindrop-like spatters, cymbal washes and dense drones before fluttering away into the ether. For such a short song, its ever-evolving nature is both captivating and remarkable.
Eli recalls: “This was the only banjo song I was able to record before the head mysteriously split in half. The banjo was supposedly from the 1850s with the original deerskin head.”
Silver Creek is released as a single tomorrow, 10th May, pre-save here: https://annannie.ffm.to/silvercreek
The press for The Wind describes the album as a convergence of Goldberg’s ambient leanings, his lifelong love of classical music, and the radiant tones of cosmic instrumental folk music like James Blackshaw and William Tyler. It was recorded in his Portland home (“I love to weave in house sounds”) and the creative process was inspired by time off from making music, which allowed him to rethink what Ann Annie represented to him as a project. “I started to expand my idea of what it could be, which was an exciting experience,” he explains. “It gave me time to think about how things change and how to move through change—what that looks like for me. I wrote a lot of these songs in an attempt to let go of a lot of things while being OK with doing so.”
“Silver Creek” joins recent singles like “Lamb’s Ear,” “Willows,” “The Wind,” “Sweet Coast,” and “Three Chords,” which will all appear on his forthcoming album The Wind, due out June 7th via Nettwerk. Pre-Order here: https://annannie.ffm.to/thewind_album
