Recommended Tracks: “Same Page,” “Can We Pretend We Just Met at a Bar?,” “I’ll Keep My Promise”
Artists You Might Like: Bishop Briggs, Hannah Stokes, Izzy Burns
There are so many ways to express yourself through music. You could make a song with lively pop beats and anthemic choruses if you’re feeling happy. If you want to broadcast a sad type of mood, you could trade in those lively beats for dramatic strings. You could sing out, whisper, shout, use auto-tune… It’s so tempting to use as much production as you can to make the moment as grand as possible, but how do you do so without losing the emotion behind it? On Tainted Silhouettes, the debut album from Ana Luna, the dreamy singer-songwriter finds a balance. She embraces the power of her feelings without using too much force, and accompanies these feelings with music that is ethereal but not too elaborate. In the end, she creates a cinematic world that allows listeners to feel, a world that is as much theirs as it is hers.
The album begins with “Fairy Tales,” an enchanting yet brooding track that introduces us to Tainted Silhouette’s dramatic world. It goes through the motions of loving someone and enjoying your time with that someone while knowing that it could all fall apart. Indeed, it does fall apart when we get to “Dance in a Trance,” which follows. With the heavy downbeats and menacing drum rolls, the track builds upon the darkness that Ana feels when she thinks back to her “caged romance.” She can’t help but ask, “Was the light you gave the light you stole from me?” and “Was I victim to deceit?,” even though she already knows the answers. Ana then lets out her frustrations on “Daddy’s Empire.” It’s a little sassy and a little bluesy as she gets into what went wrong, with her voice giving way to a disappointment as she sings, “He wanted all the things only I had.” But she had to quit while she was ahead, as she later admits, “I can’t give you what you want.”
When we get to the middle of the album, Ana further speaks her truth. On “Same Page,” she lets her ex know that she only wanted what was best. Over the fast-paced background riffs and the heavy drums, Ana sings, “You think that I despise you, that I am ungrateful,” wanting this person to know that she understands how her concerns could have seemed like criticism. But in the end, she was coming from a place of love and only wanted to “get on the same page.” When you get to a rough patch in the relationship, it is easy to remember how things used to be in the beginning, before anyone could have predicted what would happen. This is the vibe on “Can We Pretend We Just Met at a Bar?,” where Ana just wants a clean slate. She sings, “The way he looks at me, I think that I can change him / I wish that I could hate him instead,” showing how her heart and her head are at war with each other. Still, as much as you might want to take it all back, you can’t. You just have to accept and move on, and Ana does so on “Bleeding Pen.” Here, she romanticizes the fallout against a moody and slow-burning production. All the while, she sings, “Who knew the price I had to pay was to lose you?” and “You were meant to show me darker sides,” coming to terms with how things unfolded.
By the end of the album, Ana is as open as can be, fully leaning into her feelings. She shares how hard it is to move on with lines like, “My eyes are burning / You are rolling down my cheek” on “Burn You,” hoping she doesn’t get scorched in the process. The electric guitar and the elegant piano lines provide a nice and interesting contrast to one another throughout, as if depicting the harsh and soft aspects of the situation. It’s clear that Ana is trying to keep her composure, which she also does on “I’ll Keep My Promise.” After a breakup, it can feel as if a part of you is gone, but Ana is determined to remain whole. She sings, “You fell for my heart / You said don’t ever lose it” and “I don’t owe you a thing, but I’ll keep my promise,” preserving herself. There are moments where she is very exposed, either emotionally or vocally, making it a moving track overall. Obviously, love is a complicated matter, as it can interfere with honest intentions, confuse actions, and negate rational thought. On “Love Virgin,” Ana leaves us with a taste of this mess. She drops lines like, “You are what I want but not my need / You are what I need but not my want” and “If I say I love you, it doesn’t mean that I do / If I don’t say I love you, it doesn’t mean that I don’t,” trying to find some peace. She then admits, “Uncertainty, she screws me over,” as it does to all of us in the end.
About Tainted Silhouettes, Ana shares, “Many of these songs weren’t written with a project in mind. They were simply me processing what I was feeling in real time. I was experiencing big emotions while trying to look inward and understand what was behind the anger or sadness—the triggers, the perceptions I had about what happened in my relationship, and within myself. When it came time to produce the songs, I had one goal: the make them raw but cinematic.” When you listen to each track, you can easily envision Ana writing the lyrics as thoughts in a diary. It is as if she then turned its pages into an album, complete with lush, awe-inspiring music. She doesn’t try to make huge anthems with catchy choruses and captivating hooks… Ana just shares what is in her heart on these songs, resulting in an album that is raw, cinematic, and wildly human.
You can listen to Tainted Silhouettes here.
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