Annahstasia Enuke couldn’t become the star her early handlers wanted her to be. As a teenager, the Los Angeles-raised model, guitarist, and folk singer signed to a label that pushed her toward pop and R&B, genres that fit her like a straitjacket. Her vocal coaches tried to change her voice into something it wasn’t, she’s said: “All of them wanted to craft my voice into something more acrobatic, something squeezed, tight and maneuverable.” Annahstasia eventually got out of her deal and started releasing songs that foregrounded her husky natural timbre.
When Annahstasia sings, she makes use of her full range, but her low end is where the magic happens. Her warm, resonant purr makes you acutely aware of the body shaping the air—as though her experiences, dreams, and fears lurked right there in her chest. That singular instrument guides her debut album, Tether, a self-possessed set that straddles folk, rock, and chamber pop. These songs hit like tractor beams, lifting you up and suspending you in their charged dramas.
The record is produced by Andrew Lappin (L’Rain, Cassandra Jenkins), Jason Lader (Julian Casablancas), and Aaron Liao (Raveena, Moses Sumney), who supply warm, largely acoustic arrangements that flutter and swell around Annahstasia’s breathy croon. Drums appear sparingly; Liao’s basslines and Annahstasia’s cadences more often than not set the pace, which tends to be slow. The compositions flow like breath: Guitars, pianos, and other instruments flood the mix, fade out of it, then return. The flux makes the music feel lush and airy, lively but also poised.
Both modes suit Annahstasia’s tales of relationships at the tipping point. “I’m porcelain/Sitting on your highest shelf/I’m gonna fall/I’m gonna fall without your help/Take care of me/Before anyone else,” Annahstasia pleads on “Take Care of Me,” teetering in her upper register. The delicacy of the imagery and her singing blunt the distrust behind the caveat, “before anyone else.” Romance is just as fraught on the yearning “Unrest,” where domestic bliss is undercut by the “unrest/Sitting in my chest.” Over fingerpicked guitars worthy of Nick Drake, she muses, “When we sit alone/We don’t hear the alarms/’Cause when you love me/There can’t be any harm.” Beneath the song’s rapturous surface, doubts proliferate: When, she repeats, the bliss conditional.
Annahstasia’s vocal repertoire is stunning. Her singing is expressive even when it is clipped, direct even when distant. With no further scene-setting, she can spin complicated tales out of the starkest couplet—“I still hear your voice inside my head/Say that I’m the villain of the story”—aided by nothing more than the nuances of her enunciation, her voice catching on every pained syllable. But Tether showcases her command of timing above all. “The longer that I stare/At this ghetto diamond/I find it rare and different/This pile of memories/That were always lying there,” she sings on opener “Be Kind,” her vibrato stretching “rare” and “there” into quivering little hearts. The pause between the last two lines draws out the ambivalence inscribed in her imagery.
But the steely song goes on to soften, a shift also marked by pregnant pauses. “You see…/I…/Never learned/…To be kind,” Annahstasia sings haltingly, the ellipses suggesting she is both scared and eager to be vulnerable. She is exactingly deliberate in both what she sings and how she sings it; the line breaks are as meaningful as the words.
Her precision never feels overly technical or stiff. Tether is as intuitive and loose as it is intentional. “Waiting,” one of the few tracks with a strong backbeat, is exuberant. Annahstasia’s raspy runs grow in intensity as Mellotron and electric guitar swell around her, building to a rousing and relieving hook. “Silk and Velvet,” a track about the temptation to sell out, is just as fun. It begins with defeated lyrics (“Lately I’m not sure/If it really matters/If I make a sound”) and a plodding bassline, then speeds up and morphs into skronky chaos. Even when the music is calm, as on the Obongjayar duet “Slow,” tension looms. “What’s the worst that can happen/If we just let it happen?” they sing suggestively.
On standout and closer “Believer,” Annahstasia and crew rally for six minutes of big emotions and tonal swings. There’s anguish then calm; spirited electric guitar chords then soft piano melodies; growls, whispers, gospel harmonies. A middling lover is dressed down then asked, tenderly, “Can I be lonely here with you?” At the center of the storm is Annahstasia, composed but trembling. Connection, as she presents it across Tether, is dynamic, rattling in the bones, rumbling in the throat. Heartstrings, she insists in these restless and elegant songs, are meant to be tugged.
