Hi, everyone. Latethony Stagetano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of the new Annahstasia record, Tether.

This is a new debut album — still one that I am playing catch up with from West Coast singer and songwriter, Annahstasia. It's a record that she has been building up to for years with singles and a handful of EPs. But while she definitely sounds album-ready after all of that on Tether, I'm shocked at the sound, the quality, and the ambition of this first album. I feel like Anastasia is pulling off moves that are more like third, fourth, fifth album moves.

For example, take the song "Silk and Velvet", which was a teaser to this record. She delivers an intense and passionate fourth wall-break of a song where Annahstasia intellectualizes her creative process and the way she puts her work out there into the world as a job. And while maybe some of the realizations that are stated on this track might be a bit basic to some, it's rare that someone this early in their catalog is this clear-eyed about all of it.

Look at this bar over here: "Maybe I'm an analyst / An antisocial bitch."

Girl, same!

It could have something to do with her coming into this project with quite a bit of experience under her belt. From what I understand, she is about 30 years old, which I think makes sense given her powerful mature voice and strong sense of self on this record, too. It comes through not only in how she takes account of her restlessness and general dissatisfaction with life on the song "Satisfy Me", but also in how she embodies her influences and plays into her strengths vocally.

She also seemingly knew exactly who she needed to connect with in order to make this album, because she did work with a few producers on this LP, and collectively, they have all done stuff for the likes of Anohni and the Johnsons, James Blake, Moses Sumney, Raveena, and many others. These are names that are pretty important to make note of, especially given this album's super dramatic performances, subtle arrangements, and most importantly, Annahstasia's voice, which there's a lot of range to: a lot of volume, quite a bit of low-end, and lots of vibrato. Her vocals shake, her vocals quake but in such a commanding and authoritative way, especially when she gets all whipped up in the emotion of her songs, like on the end of "Waiting", where her vocals are like a force of nature, a mighty river, something along those lines.

But there are also plenty of cuts on this project that feature very warm and intimate vocal performances with super ornate, indie folk instrumentation, like what you would get off of a good Mountain Goats record, or even Laura Marling to an extent. The song "Villan" even kicks off with these ghostly guitar arpeggios that are so Carrie and Lowell — a Sufjan-type beat, if you will. I really do think this record has a lot of crossover potential with a lot of fans of great artists like Anohni or Perfume Genius; maybe even Kara Jackson fans will like this as well. If you want to throw it back: Tracy Chapman!

But as much as Annahstasia shares in common with those artists, I think she most definitely stands out on her own as a vocalist and a lyricist, too. Because the lyrics and writing are most definitely a massive selling point on this record as well. There are a lot of songs in this tracklist about love, about interpersonal relationships, and I just really get a lot out of how Annahstasia writes about them.

Like how she's in this dynamic where she's being made out to be the bad guy on "Villain", a track that's so self-affirming and grandiose with these epic choral group vocals at the very end of the song. Are we ignoring red flags? Are we just going deaf to the world around us because of the bliss that we have together? It could be either. I also love the way that she describes being someone's priority on the song "Take Care of Me", and the pain, anxiety, and tension of having to long for somebody for such long strands of time on "Waiting". When those lyrics hit about coming back home, you really feel it.

The musical and lyrical momentum on the song "Overflow" is just unstoppable. Annahstasia is really like a moving train on this one. I mean, the roll that she's on – she just runs through lyrics like: "I'm going down in your history / It's not up to you / It's not even up to me."

Another thing I should note with this record are the features, which are not my favorite quality about the album, but they are certainly interesting. There's some chemistry with singer and songwriter Obongjayar, who I think has an interesting dynamic with Annahstasia. The track that he features on ["Slow"], though, I think has an ending that meanders a bit. And toward the end of the album, we also have this sudden spoken-word poetry passage featuring aja monet, whose voice on this track ["All Is. Will Be. As It Was"] is just beautiful. I mean, the track really does stand out and feels like a bit of a detour, but it's still a very pretty moment on the album.

The record moves into a very strong finish as well, especially with the track "Believer", which is maybe the loudest, heaviest, most immense track on the album, like a big rock finale. So it truly does cap this album off with a bang as we're hit with all of these incredible layers of instrumentation and lyrics about loneliness and isolation.

But yeah, what else can I say other than I was really taken aback with just how good this album was. For it to be as good, and as well-produced, and as clear as the album is in terms of vision, I feel like even off of one single album, I could so easily pick up on Annahstasia's voice and style pretty easily.

I just feel like that kind of development does not come very easily, very quickly. It's just impressive to see it so early in her catalog here. But yeah, I really enjoyed this. Feeling a strong 8 to a light 9 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Annahstasia. Forever.