In A Love Denial

Anna Wise “Nerve”

“Nerve” contrasts a clicky impatient beat with a vocal performance by Anna Wise that’s soulful, serene, and certain. The incongruity is the point – knowing what you need and what you want, and feeling an nagging anxiety and desperate urgency about making it real. The rest of the arrangement is all shifting planes of melody and texture, all of it feeling ephemeral and unsettled. There’s other fragments of vocals in counterpoint – background chatter, a few declarations that break into the course of the verses – but it’s just more distracting thoughts and feelings circling the calm center of Wise’s voice. Hearing her speak the words “but I got to do this for me” doesn’t sound half as confident as hearing her sing any other emphatic statement in the song.

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