Boston-based singer-songwriter Anjimile Chithambo’s life changed when they realized they could rebuild themself. Born in a Dallas suburb to conservative, Presbyterian immigrants from Malawi, the 27-year-old indie-folk artist, who records mononymously as Anjimile, spent the past decade whittling away at music as a hobby-turned-coping method. The experience of coming out to their parents as queer eventually inspired “Maker,” a song that compares a redefinition of gender to one of faith—and paved the way for Giver Taker, their first album on Father/Daughter. Written during the throes of a personal decline and recorded after reaching safety on the other side, Giver Taker recounts a difficult climb to sobriety, the loss of loved ones, and the gradual understanding of their identity as a nonbinary trans person. It’s not the struggles that define the album, but rather the joy and resilience that permeates it.
A grant from a local arts group gave Anjimile the budget to create Giver Taker the way they envisioned: by hiring longtime bandmate Justine Bowe of synthpop group Photocomfort and New York-based artist and producer Gabe Goodman. Together, Bowe and Goodman add layered depth to Anjimile’s compositions: Sunlight peeks through piano chords on the title track, strings and bass clarinet shimmer throughout “In Your Eyes,” and vocal harmonies enliven “Baby No More.” Childhood favorites like Madonna and Zimbabwean musician Oliver Mtukudzi surface in Anjimile’s pop refrains and African polyrhythms, while their teenage appreciation for Iron & Wine influences their approach to finger-picked guitar. Though the album was primarily written while in rehab and experiencing a quiet identity crisis, Giver Taker proceeds with the radiant happiness and pride that come with securing a sense of stability in life. Even when they quote Shakespeare in the heartfelt ballad “Ndimakukonda” (the title means “I love you” in Chichewa, their parents’ native language), Anjimile emphasizes gratitude by reworking the love song to address friends instead of an ex-partner.
It’s hard not to compare Anjimile to a young Sufjan Stevens, both because of their warbling vocal deliveries and their ambiguously religious lyrics. While the songs on Giver Taker center around life experiences with family, grief, and love, a thread of faith weaves through each: the calls for help in “Not Another Word,” the stubborn refusal of death in “Your Tree,” the reckoning with hereditary traits in “1978.” Like Sufjan, Anjimile subverts the platitudes of Christian music by softly treading along the metaphoric ridge where spirituality adjoins hope. “I’ll walk the line to meet you there,” they promise at the album’s end, singing just above a whisper. Tucked throughout are soft piano, stirring banjo, and frail falsettos—the result of Anjimile’s first year taking testosterone—that recall the holistic intimacy of albums like Michigan and Seven Swans.
Though they’ve released several records over the past six years, Anjimile has declared Giver Taker to be their debut full-length. It’s a choice that reflects their significant growth in style and sound: Whereas their earlier material veered towards melodic art-rock, the music on Giver Taker sounds radically gentle and confident, as if made by someone who’s experienced a rebirth. Even the stripped-back reworkings of songs from 2018’s Colors and 2019’s Maker Mixtape feel revitalized. It’s most evident in “Maker,” a song that unfolds like a mantra of self-actualization: “I’m not just a boy, I’m a man/I’m not just a man, I’m a god/I’m not just a god, I’m a maker.” A transcendental evolution from gender identity to spiritual calling and, finally, to creative purpose, it’s the centerpiece of Giver Taker, the album where Anjimile takes pride in their voice and the person they’ve become.
Buy: Rough Trade
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