Ana Roxanne: Poem 1 review | Safi Bugel's experimental album of the month

(Kranky)
​Essaying a broken heart, the New Yorker puts her voice front and centre for her most accessible work yet, though still with unexpected details – and a Schumann cover

The new album from Ana Roxanne was written after a transformative experience of heartbreak. And just as you might wake up one day after a breakup and find yourself feeling OK, there’s a new clarity here. Where the New York-based musician’s vocals were once stretched out and suspended among hazy ambient textures, on Poem 1 they are front and centre. For the first time, we hear Roxanne’s lovely, wispy voice in lucid detail, as she contemplates loss and desire over slow and stripped-back compositions.

The record opens with a collection of mournful ballads which draw more on pop songwriting than Roxanne’s usual amorphous style. Her yearning is tangible in the simple yet evocative lyrics, but also beyond: the tense vibrato of the strings in The Age of Innocence; the sustained keys in Keepsake. There are occasional traces of the experimentalism of her first two records, in the droning synths, or the faint, granular whirr of tape looming in the background. These elements, paired with Roxanne’s strength as a singer, give these songs a leg-up when they risk feeling too drab or generic.