Anna McClellan - I saw first light (Pink Vinyl) - VINYL LP

Enrico Casazza - Sinfonie Da Concerto Grosso [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/13/2007

The third album from Omaha, NE-based songwriter, Anna McClellan entitled I saw first light obliquely relates a tumultuous year in the life of it's composer. Moving, geographically, from the heart of New York City to a bucolic retreat upstate, and finally back to her midwestern hometown of Omaha, NE, Anna also traversed emotional states - from the restless frenzy of urban life, to the enforced, depressive rumination of the country. Her vision - one artist's reckoning with her forebears and coevals, along with her ongoing obligation to use art as a tool for connection and understanding - coalesced, upon her return to Nebraska, with the help of local friends, into the album.

The road to Anna McClellan's Yes and No was not just a metaphorical one. Born out of a long solo road trip McClellan took in 2015, the songs map her emotions of the two year period in which they were written like a highway is laid out before it's driver. McClellan's singular voice mixes earnest intensity with nonchalant melancholy that puts the listener in a distant place, far away from other humans, as most of the subject matter deals with loneliness and internal emotional navigation.