Heck Of A Guy

Will Not Be Blue 2

Blue Alert II - NOT The Next Anjani Album

As I Was Saying To Anjanikins,

After receiving a dozen emails asking me about the long-impending Anjani album, I put into motion a cleverly devious investigatory strategy. Using a listening device that could also transmit, I surreptitiously dialed her number and slyly asked her “What’s up with the new album?”

Faced with that type of sophisticated interrogation, she soon spilled the beans.

Well, a few beans at least.

It’s About Time

Those of you who follow the adventures of Anjani may know that once upon a time in lala land, this album was originally scheduled for completion early this year. The rate limiting step, it turns out, was not writer’s block.

Psychiatrists use the term, “overdetermined” to indicate an effect (e.g., an emotion, an element of a dream) that has multiple causes, any of which might be sufficient to account for the effect. One might analogously consider Anjani’s efforts to develop the songs on this album overinspired.

In the past year, Anjani has sequentially invested herself in at least three distinct and independent projects she felt confident would result in an album.

The good news for those of us waiting for the final product is that it appears that none of these schemes were aborted because they were found to be unworkable but because a better concept came along.

The most recent delay has an odder origin.

After putting together a playlist suitable for the album, hiring musicians, and the 27,442 other details of creating a CD, including recording the tracks, Anjani, who had been working with a voice coach, found her vocal range and strength had improved so markedly that those already recorded songs possessed significant potential that could be realized only by reworking them and performing them with her newfound capacity.

Yep, the current wait is the result not of an entertainer’s injury or illness impairing the capacity to perform but because of an improvement in that entertainer’s skills.

With only moderate haranguing from me, Anjani volunteers a guarded, hedged judgment that the album will be released no later than the end of this year.

Content and Style

Anjani is less explicit about what the next album will be than what it will not be.

For example, Anjani’s next album will not be Blue Alert II. Blue Alert is a gorgeous set of songs that are so intrinsically private and powerful that it is impossible to imagine them being performed anywhere other than the most intimate venues.

Further, …

Anjani’s Next Album Will Also Not Be

Anjani, the first Anjani Thomas Album

… a reprise of her first album, Anjani (above) or her second, The Sacred Names (below), which was, like Blue Alert, produced by Leonard Cohen.

The Sacred Names, the second album by Anjani Thomas

The new album will, in fact, be significantly different from any of her previous efforts.¹

Anjani slots the songs in a genre once called “soft rock” - before that once highly valued category was subsumed and eviscerated by the amorphous blob known as “adult contemporary” - with portions of folk, world music, and jazz added to the mix.

Perhaps more intriguing than her precise words was Anjani’s enthusiasm about the forthcoming album. While she has never been less than gracious and generous when we’ve written or talked, this conversation was striking for the animation and genuine excitement she demonstrated as she spoke of the flow of the work and songs that wrote themselves, leading her rather than her constructing them.

More mundane but, I would contend, just as significant is the sustained and ongoing work that has been the hallmark of her involvement in this album. This is distinctly atypical of her usual style which she has outlined this way:

“I quickly discovered that I did not have the wherewithal to sit in a practice room for four, six, eight hours a day. This is not in my nature - and it has, unfortunately, continued to the present day. “I’m notoriously uninspired when it comes to practicing,” she said. “But give me a deadline and, two days before, I’ll sit down and work my butt off.”²

The most striking comment, however, occurred as our conversation was ending with bit of social chitchat (e.g., “How are the kids?” “How’s Leonard?” “Is the weather nice out there.?”). Anjani paused for a moment and, referring to the songs destined for the new album, commented, with a lilt to her voice,

It’s the kind of music that makes you feel like dancing
- and I want to feel like dancing.

It was the strangest thing, but I was absolutely convinced that dancing was exactly what she was doing that moment.

Which made me feel like dancing too.


Footnotes

1. From her response to my suggestion, it also seems safe to rule out a Bluegrass tinged blend of ska, blues, and grunge performed by Anjani, Junior Brown, and Hannah Montana, backed by an 41 piece all girl, all accordion band.↩
2. Breathing easy in her own style by Bernard Perusse, The Gazette, June 1, 2006↩

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