ANNA TIVEL SHARES ANIMAL POEM B-SIDE “MEMPHIS”
FLUFF & GRAVY RECORDS
Portland, Oregon-based artist Anna Tivel has shared a new b-side from her widely acclaimed 2025 album Animal Poem called “Memphis,” available now via Fluff & Gravy Records. Of the track, she offers, “I started writing ‘Memphis’ on an airplane after meeting an electric eyed ex-convict heading to an evangelical gathering in Tennessee. He was magnetic, ecstatic, possibly manic, and so in love with life. He got me thinking about the things we reach for when reality is too painful to accept.”
Met with widespread critical acclaim upon release, Animal Poem was included in NPR Music’s New Music Friday broadcast with Stephen Thompson praising, “Just gorgeous through and through – I have a new favorite song with every listen,” and WMOT’s Jessie Scott adding, “I kind of find her in the vein of beat poets, and I’m just enthralled with what she does.” Pitchfork gave the album a 7.6 rating, calling Tivel “a wizard on par with The Weather Station at turning nature into a character unto itself.” No Depression says, “There’s something about the spaces between Tivel’s minimalist writing, precision-targeted rhetorical flourishes, and her spare delivery that make her music vivid and alive: pregnant with possibility and a future that is never quite foreclosed, even when the protagonist is dead.”
Recorded live in a circle with some of Tivel’s dearest friends, including fellow Portland artist and co-producer Sam Weber, Animal Poem was made in conversation: everyone together in the room, listening and responding in real time without the separation of walls and headphones. Of the record, Tivel writes:
“Every album is a snapshot, a momentary study of the way a mind reaches for understanding. I can feel myself reaching in these songs, for whatever is right beyond my grasp. Mortality and connection. Suffering and meaning. People lead the narratives, come into orbit, spin away again – an exhausted mother at a freeway exit, an aging neighbor surrounded by a growing pile of newspapers, the unsung heroes of a midwest uprising, two lovers looking at the sky.
It’s hard to know how to hold a creative life in a time that feels fraught with venomous division, careening technological advance, and an ever widening chasm between the affluent and the dispossessed. What good are poems when affordable housing is scarce, the climate teeters on a dangerous edge, and war breaks out over misinformation spread by profit hungry algorithms? I think about being here. How brief it is. How incomplete our understanding. I think about history. All the worlds we’ve created and broken. Revolution and renaissance. Hope and humility. Everyone here is living a creative life – teachers and parents, kids and convenience store clerks. We’re all tasting this wild existence, finding ways to express how much it hurts and moves us. This work is my own small addition to that communal story. The water we swim in. The way our attention molds our truths. Humanity is unfolding as we describe it. We’ll never get it right, but the attempt is everything.”
In celebration of Animal Poem‘s release, Tivel will support The Barr Brothers for a string of dates in February, followed by an appearance at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville in March. See below for full tour details.
Tour Dates
February 13: Detroit, MI | El Club^
February 14: Chicago, IL | Thalia Hall^
February 16: Pittsburgh, PA | Thunderbird Cafe & Music Hall^
February 18: Vienna, VA | Wolf Trap^
February 19: Philadelphia, PA | Underground Arts^
February 20: Brooklyn, NY | Music Hall of Williamsburg^
March 29: Big Ears Festival | Knoxville, TN
^supporting The Barr Brothers
Artist Links
Photo Credit: Matt Kennelly
