Back in May, Annie Toth shared ‘Peaks & Plains‘, a teaser track from her then-unannounced debut album; providing vocals and keyboards, she’s the leader of AM Higgins; simultaneously a solo project and, on the record, a trio completed by Jason Toth on drums and Joshua Dumas layering everything with electronics, which you can hear clearly in the skittering embellishments of her latest offering, which we’re premiering today as well as announcing details of the aforementioned 8-song record.
Toth has been a part of a couple of Chicago bands, but she upped sticks for rural France and started over. That sense of wide-eyed wonder and excitement runs through ‘Anchors’, an absolutely beautiful, cinematic track that finds a home on Hymning, created last year amid the unfolding pandemic: ‘”Come along, and be my anchor” – this melody came to me and I sang it for months as a meditation to help soothe my mind while the world was coming undone’ Annie explains. ‘For this record, I asked Joshua [Dumas] to reach for an entirely new palette of sounds. ‘Anchors’ was the first one he sent back. The bells, the high strings – I love it all. He played the mandolin live and put it through a pixel grinder. And Jason has a skittery way of running around the organ chords on the drums with this one. It’s something we are continuing to explore.”
It’s a gem, and it’s lifted from the trio’s forthcoming debut – tune in below, and stay tuned for Hymning, landing Friday November 5th on Victorialand.
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