Frank's Corner #19: In Conversation With Ann Annie.
Establishing transitional phases, recording on tape, and being a member of the sprawling Portland music ecosystem.
Welcome back lovely people. I hope you’re kickin’ strong and mighty. Keeping with the theme of the weather, I can officially confirm…it’s still GARBAGE outside in Maryland. I won’t dwell on it too much this time though because the music I got to listen to leading up to this conversation is some of the most artful, well crafted set of compositions I’ve heard in quite some time.
Eli Goldberg, riding under the alias Ann Annie has music with stories to tell and only a few words to do so. He expressed to me early on how layered sounds, frequencies, and tape recordings are in most cases, his primary life’s breath. Nowadays, he finds himself hopeful to achieve a sort of sonic transition. In attempting to do so, however, he tells me the process has become cyclical, at times frustratingly repetitve as many of the sounds he now aims to realize have already been done under his name, or have otherwise rendered themselves disinteresting from his POV.
There’s something very telling about the nature of this anecdote, this transition, this blip, whatever you wanna call it. Ann Annie’s struggles are realistically his superpower. He bears creativity so broad, tamed, humble, constantly vying to build and expand. To me, it sounds like a massive hurdle when you’ve already touched so much, dabbled with so many samples, concepts, feelings. I find it all incredibly profound, which is especially funny given how laid back and blazé Goldberg spoke of the whole thing. I mean, I do believe he knows just how good he is (I really hope he does) but he’s so humble and meticulous with the way he navigates reflections of his work both past and present. I mean, at one point we were chatting away and, as you’ll soon read, he casually brought up the sixteen (like one-six) part chamber version of his latest EP’s title track ‘home’ which he arranged and wrote himself. If that isn’t telling of the type of artist he is and the scale of work he’s putting out right now, I’m afraid you’re beyond saving.
Beyond all this, we got to chat about his love for the craft of video game and film scoring, Portland as a growing music community, and some music beyond his own that’s been keeping the brain gears turning.
I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did, Eli is such a gem.
25F: With the first idea of the home EP, was there any non-musical moment, image, or something that told you, “Okay, home is what I need to make now”?
Ann Annie: Not really. I had started writing home as an instrumental piece beforehand that was much more stripped back—that’s on the Side B of the record. The only non-musical thing was that I decided I wanted to record straight to tape for all this stuff and not use my computer as much as I could.
The basis of home—the guitar part and some of the strings—was just directly on tape. Then I met the vocalist, Essie Humberston, at a show I was hosting at my studio. As soon as I heard her singing, I was like, “Whoa, I want to work with this person.” She wrote all the lyrics and the melody. When we were recording the vocals, all the other instruments just came together right after. For me, that song was always unfinished in the instrumental format; I wrote it thinking a vocalist would work with it, but I just hadn’t found the right fit. As soon as we added the vocals, that same night, I tried some other stuff, and all the other instrumentation came together super easily. That was a cool moment, for sure.
I was reading about the processes in your records, and you talked about setting specific challenges for yourself. Was recording primarily on tape the main challenge for this record, or were there others you set while creating it?
Weirdly, my challenge for this record was to not make it as challenging. The previous record was so difficult that for this one, I just wanted to do it in a simpler way that was a little less intense. Which, in itself, was a challenge. That was difficult.
Was making this EP under the Ann Annie project a way of refining your sound, or was it more like sneaking into a side room and veering away from the sound you typically do on a full-fledged record?
It’s more of the latter, just because I’m in a transitional phase. I want to stop doing what I’ve been doing and try something else—I was getting tired of my previous approach. So, subconsciously but also very consciously, it’s a different process and a different tone.
Does using this different sound serve as a distraction or a coping mechanism for feeling stressed? There are a million things to be stressed about in the world right now. I’m curious where those emotions come from.
Music for me is always a coping mechanism and a distraction. Sometimes the music I’m writing just matches different points in my life or whatever music I’m currently listening to. For this recent one, I had some pretty big life changes happen, so it’s reflecting that new feeling—starting a new chapter of my life.
What kind of stuff are you listening to right now?
I’ve been listening to a lot of quickly, quickly’s newish record. It’s so good; he’s one of my favorite artists. He actually just produced my other project’s record. He’s a Portlander, a super nice guy, and one of the best musicians I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve been listening to only that record.
Such a good record. That came out end of last year, right?
Yeah, he’s so insanely talented as a producer and as an artist.
I wanted to bring up Portland as well. I spoke to Alec from Searows a few weeks ago, and we talked a lot about the city. When I first listened to home specifically, I felt like it was the type of thing inspired by its surroundings. Were you looking at a specific room in your house, or was the Portland environment inspiring you?
The general environment definitely influences me—the darker part of our season. But I actually originally wrote home in the spring of last year. It has a springtime feel because trees were blossoming and things like that.
If you could have people listen to your record in a specific setting to best optimize it, what would that look like?
Probably on a road trip somewhere really beautiful, or wherever you feel comfortable. Wherever you could just lie down.
I was reading about your background with film scores and the essay you wrote for Atwood, which was awesome. Were you approaching these pieces with that “film score muscle” in the back of your head?
Not super intentionally for this specific EP, but in general, the way I write music is very much in that ethos. Film scores often aren’t super dense or complex on the music theory side—it’s very simple changes and slow movements. It’s not a ton of crazy chords; it’s all very harmonically rich. I think that’s how I like to write: it’s more about the whole feeling of the song rather than crazy chord changes.
Has working in those slow, stretched-out textures changed how you remember things in your own life—like childhood or family—compared to “normal time”?
Maybe a little bit. It’s sort of a meditative state in that way.
You mentioned loving the “full-body feeling” of sound, the way a film score can physically move you. Was there anywhere on the home EP where you were chasing that sensation?
In the middle of home, between the two vocal verses, there is a specific section. I got hyper-focused and obsessed with finishing that song. Writing that instrumental part was pretty interesting to me.
What part of that specific instrumental evokes that for you?
Definitely the piano part. That tied everything together. That was the only part I didn’t record during the vocals because my piano isn’t in my house. I recorded the horns, clarinets, and some of the strings with the vocals in the room, and then over the following couple of days, I recorded the piano and some more string stuff. Those piano lines really do it.
I’m not sure if you’ve played it live yet, but how do you translate that intimacy and quietness into a live setting without losing the sense of scale?
I actually just did a 16-piece chamber version of it alongside the recorded version. I can send you the link. We captured it super well, but it was tough—it took years off my life trying to score that thing. There are so many talented people in Portland, and I got super lucky with the group that came together. They are all extremely talented in their own specific ways, but they really understand the quietness and the softness of it. I’m sending you the link right now.
I had a note written down asking, “What the hell is in the water in Portland?” The music and ambition coming out of there right now feels like its own crazy, almost majestic sort of movement. What is your take on the scene nowadays?
I grew up here. I don’t think it has always been like this. When I was performing in middle school and high school, it felt a lot less accessible. But now, especially after COVID, Portland feels like the perfect size. It’s small enough that the music community is super tight—everybody knows each other, and it’s very supportive across different genres.
I run a little venue, and we’ll have the same person playing drums for 20 different bands over the course of a couple of months. It feels like an ecosystem. It’s also big enough that growth happens, and there are a lot of bands, but it’s not so big that people become overwhelming or overly competitive.
For someone who has been releasing solo projects for a while now, where does this EP sit in your mental map of the Ann Annie project?
That’s a good question. I think this EP represents a shifting time. I want to shift the project, but the directions I’m feeling are pretty different. On one hand, I want to do more vocal collaborations, but on the other, I want to do more orchestral music, which is a lot more daunting to figure out.
The Ann Annie stuff has always come super naturally. Almost every record, I tell myself I’m going to make a shift, but then it doesn’t sound that different. It shifts slightly but is still recognizably Ann Annie, which is cool. There’s a reason I keep coming back to it. Personally, I want to start doing more production work for other people, specifically vocalists. I used to sing myself, but I just got tired of hearing my own voice. I don’t need to do that anymore.
Well, you’re doing just fine on the production side, I can tell you that much.
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Listen to ‘home’ on Spotify and Bandcamp. Follow Ann Annie on Instagram.