Album Review: Anna McClellan Shows The Struggle Between “Yes And No”
Anns McClellan feels like another sentimental soldier in the army of artists trying to sincerely analyze self-doubt. It is amazing to see how many artists can share the same theme, but contain a galaxy of variations in sounds, interpretations, and messages. Like Totally Mild or FRIGS, which also come out this week, McClellan’s Yes And No adds another feminine voice discussing human grapples with certainty and determination.
Yes And No has an innate capacity to make really sentimental songs feel like folk legends. Suddenly, Confusion is playing the piano to ping-pong her thoughts on what she should do about her future (“But At The Same TIme”). The next minute/ track, Boredom and Anxiety are trying to “Look Alive”, despite feeling like the human embodiment of a drain. I know that is dramatic, but if our feelings are so simple to characterize or compartmentalize then WHY are they not so easy to change.
For all that we are aware of and can describe our darker feelings, changing them feels near-impossible, which can make our mindfulness seem useless. What is the point of knowing you are going to crash if you never put your foot on the brakes? Stability and happiness seem to be at opposite sides of the human spectrum. Though persons try to stabilize joy, it quakes and shatters through time to reform again into a new joy that is pleasant but leaves you nostalgic for past ones, of which it will become one, as well. This “theory on happiness” courses through songs, “Heart of Hearts”, “Happy Type”, and “Holding On Too Tight”, where McClellan’s voice harrows in its facile aloofness. She sings so cleanly, like a woman who never met a problem. Yet, she is fracturing her chords and ripping emotions as if she was the “Queen” of them.
McClellan beautifully throws you off. She is that person, in a crisis, who might be melting down internally, but somehow has appears stoic enough to lessen your panic. While her melodies feel pressed into quietness and her voice feels pushed into calm, her lyrics are like stars shining beacons of light into the night to show you that you are in darkness. It is a powerful image as if to say we would never know that it was night had it not been for the moon’s brightness. The moon, on this record, being McClellan’s powerful insight on how it is that individuals decide the times when we are happy or sad, staying or leaving, or yes or no. To Buy Anna McClellan’s Yes And No on February 23 Click Here.
