Anna Tivel Shares 'Black Umbrella' Single From Forthcoming Album 'Outsiders'

Portland, Oregon's Anna Tivel is set to release her highly anticipated new album Outsiders on August 19 via Mama Bird Recording Co. (Damien Jurado, Courtney Marie Andrews, Haley Heynderickx, Myriam Gendron).

Recorded almost entirely live to tape in Rock Island, IL, the 11-track set is a collaborative exploration from the same vibrant group of friends who helped craft Tivel's acclaimed record, The Question - heralded by NPR Music as "One Of The Most Ambitious Folk Records of 2019" - including producer & multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens).

Outsiders is available for pre-order now at Bandcamp. The album's second single "Black Umbrella" arrives today alongside a visual filmed by Eric J. Loeffler.

Of the track, Tivel offers, "'Black Umbrella' is a song about all the ways we fail to really see each other and the systems in place that so often serve only a lucky few. It's about poverty and desperation, race and power, history, opportunity, and otherness. I wrote it in a motel in Virginia. Sometimes songs are like blocks of marble you slowly chip away at hoping to reveal a hidden truth.

Sometimes they come rushing and insistent, everything at once in a sort of manic out of body flood, you're there but also far away watching the animal of yourself express something without thinking of form or craft, just the raw moan of an emotion building up. Black Umbrella was the latter kind of song, written on a day off on tour after a long drive through small towns barely holding on, past trailer parks and run down shacks, bars, pawn shops and rusty church marquees, past kids sitting outside every gas station with a hardness in their eyes that only comes from the continually reinforced failure of those big promises of youth and freedom and country to extend to them."

Of the forthcoming record, Tivel adds,
"Outsiders is a meditation on otherness, a deep dive into the myriad forces that keep us from connecting in real ways and a celebration of the ones that draw us together. From space exploration to schizophrenia, power imbalance to potent honesty in an old van, these songs are meant as a small prayer of recognition for loneliness and love, and all the ways we try and fail and try again to see each other clearly and let ourselves be seen."

Folk Alley previously premiered the album's title track and first single, praising, "The songs that come from Anna Tivel are always thoughtful and emotionally intelligent. There's a lightness to them-possibly due to the airiness of her vocals, but also the sparse poetry of her lyrics and the way she fills in music around them. Rather than saturate her soundscapes, she offers just enough of a pillow for the songs to jump and land."

Tivel is currently touring throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe and receiving high praise from the likes of the Boston Globe and WXPN, with the latter saying, "Slowly but surely, Portland, Oregon folk singer Anna Tivel is building her name across the U.S. and beyond with her beautifully haunting, intimate albums." See below for full tour details.

Watch the new music video here:

Anna Tivel On Tour

July 26 - Range Rider - Enterprise, OR
July 27 - The Olympic Venue - Boise, ID
July 28 - Sawtooth Valley Gathering - Stanley, ID
July 29 - Live From The Divide - Bozeman, MT
July 30 - Lucky You Lounge - Spokane, WA
July 31 - Heartwood Center - Sandpoint, ID
Aug 2 - Asylum for Art - Calgary, AB
Aug 3 - The Red Hart - Red Deer, AB
Aug 4 - Edmonton Folk Festival - Edmonton, AB
Aug 9 - Skyhouse Sessions - Kelowna, BC
Aug 10 - The Wise - Vancouver, BC
Aug 11 - Miller's - Carnation, WA
Aug 15 - Himlavalvet - Stockholm, SE
Aug 16 - Ettans Pub - Mariehamn, FI
Aug 18 - Kulturkvarteret - Örebro, SE
Aug 19 - Rootsy Summer Fest - Falkenberg, SE
Aug 20 - Österlän Americana Festival - Löderup, SE
Aug 21 - The Never-Ending Mind-Expanding Coconut Experience Musikkfestival - Halden, NO
Aug 25 - Tønder Festival - Tønder, DK
Aug 26 - The Nest Church House - London, UK*
Aug 26 - Greenbelt Festival - Kettering, UK
Aug 30 - Gullivers - Manchester, UK*
Sept 1 - The Wight Bear - Bournemouth, UK*
Sept 2 - St. Matthias Church - London, UK*
Sept 4 - Luxor Live - Arnhem, NL*
Sept 5 - Muziekgebouw Eindhoven - Eindhoven, NL*
Oct 6 - The Basement - Nashville, TN^
Oct 8 - Isis Music Hall - Asheville, NC^
Oct 9 - The Evening Muse - Charlotte, NC^
Oct 11 - The Pinhook - Durham, NC^
Oct 12 - Bourgie Nights - Wilmington, NC^
Oct 13 - Blue Jay Listening Room - Jacksonville, FL^
Oct 14 - Eddie's Attic - Decatur, GA^
Oct 15 - Hernando's Hideaway - Memphis, TN^
*appearing with Jeffrey Martin
^appearing with Lou Hazel

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