Ana Roxanne – Poem 1

Ana Roxanne has emerged as someone unique – an artist whose work has the feeling of a pile of sun-bleached Julie London records, and a kind of abstracted, weightless heartache few can get close to. It’s been a while since we’ve seen her though, her only work since her sole full-length record in 2020 being a collaboration with DJ Python that managed to neuter both of their respective visions.

Poem 1 is a return to form; so much more focused and well-defined, but moving forward too, showcasing herself as a great songwriter amidst the ambient wash of her earlier work, as on the brilliant spartan Keepsake. She remains a brilliant sculptor of sounds, meaning even a song that that lags, like the meandering Wishful (draft), is still pretty enough that you can admire the view as it trundles along to nowhere in particular.

As much as this is the work of an artist who understands what they are good at and works within it, there’s a new starkness to the best of the record. Her voice, so pure it’s almost oppressive, like the cruel dawn light in a Carl Dreyer film, moves centre stage, no longer smothered in reverb and mushed in the mix. It’s never better than on the swooning Cover Me, which draws the line between Roxanne’s work and the pristine harmonising of 50s mainstays like The Fleetwoods, turning it into something otherworldly and sublime, a feat she manages time and again across the record.

Listen to: Cover Me, Keepsake, Untiled II