PH Chats: Anna Westin
With a new single ‘Incense Ascending’ recently released and a new album looming over the horizon, there was no better time to chat to contemporary folk-riser Anna Westin…
PH: What, to you, makes a good playlist?
Hmm, interesting question. I’d like to say – and maybe this is just at this point in time today – but I really like when you’ve got a playlist with a theme, but it has a bunch of different songs. So, like, you’ve got classical, and pop and reggae, but there’s an emotion that connects them and maybe it is just you that knows what that is, so the contrasts are actually different sides of one experience.
PH: If you were deserted on an island what would be a playlist of 5 songs you couldn’t live without?
Leonard Cohen, What Happens to the Heart
Rufus Wainwright, Agnus Dei
Ana Diaz, Det Löser Sig
Sufjan Stevens, Death with Dignity
Stevie Wonder, A Place in the Sun
PH: On the other side of it, what would be a playlist of 5 songs you find impossible to listen to?
A whole playlist of elevator music.
PH: How relevant do you think playlists are in the modern age of consuming music?
I think they can help to showcase songs that you might not find easily – and it opens you to exposure to new music, which is nice. I think it can also make you a bit lazy – and it misses the whole story element of listening to an album.
PH: What playlist would you say best suits your new single?
Refractions – with lyrics
PH: Did you encounter any difficulties or challenges in writing the new track?
This track was actually pretty easy to write. The real difficulty I encountered was sleeping, which resulted in being awake and trying to distract myself by writing. Figuring out the bridge was something that took a bit more time – trying to find a ribbon of connection that leads you out into something new – that feels like a bit of a delicate act.
PH: What does Incense Ascending represent in the grander picture of the new album?
Ooh I love that question! It comes closer to the end of the album. It acts almost as a ‘collecting up’ of the pain and the questions and all of the fractures of experience explored in the album, and offering them as something sacred that has the potential of being recreated into something new. It almost feels like the flip side of ‘A Slow Revelation’, the first single, which is the last song on the album. The song titles are supposed to read as a poem:
Bright Burning Mess.
It is Good You are Here.
[She Said,] ‘I Let it Go for Lightness’.
Fire in the Desert.
You Found: Luminous.
This is a Moment
Incense Ascending
A Slow Revelation.
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