From the creative well of Kris Anaya comes An Angle’s third offering, The Truth Is That You Are Alive, out June 12th on Drive-Thru Records. An Angle has two previous full-lengths on Drive-Thru, We Can Breathe Under Alcohol (2005) and …And Take It With A Grain of Salt (2004). Anaya and An Angle have gone through several sonic transformations and the journey continues with The Truth, a rock album with pop influxes like the catchy bounce of “I’m Alright” and the lead single and forthcoming video, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Trouble!” Anaya gets gritty in the sexy blues bump of “C’mon C’mon” and shows he can shake it in “Ghost In The Mirror,” a dancey Arcade Fire-like number. It wouldn’t be An Angle without a few mid-tempo numbers of deep, philosophical introspection, like “No More Child In Me.” The Truth Is You Are Alive really shines with sweet tenderness of the lullaby “You Are Loved” and the straight-forward man and guitar combo on “Going To Heaven” that is signature An Angle. To record The Truth, Anaya once again teamed up with his good friend Robert “Flossy” Cheek at the Hangar Studio in Anaya’s hometown of Sacramento. Cheek co-produced the record with Anaya with Thom Monahan (Devendra Banhart, Vetiver) mixing and Eric Broyhill (!!!, Tera Malos) mastering. In his own words, Anaya describes the concept behind The Truth as “being alive and the choices you make to balance yourself in such a crooked world.” The songs are about death, fear, anxiety, and letting go, but also about love. Love for your family and friends, love for your art and yourself. “I have been through a lot of death this past year and it made me believe how small we are, that we cannot judge but rejoice in what we have, because we have so little time.” Anaya’s vision propels all aspects of The Truth from the song writing and arranging, to the production and recording, even the Latino inspired album art. “I started thinking, ‘my album celebrates life and death and so does my culture,’” and with that in mind, Anaya created nichos or boxes of Day Of The Dead scenes that depict six stages in life: birth, childhood, career, marriage, family, and death. He spent hours constructing each of the nichos by hand including molding the skeleton figurines from clay and hand-painting each scene. “I’m not really an artist of this nature,” Anaya says, “but I tried my hardest to project what I felt is my vision.” The Truth Is That You Are Alive track listing:
- Oh! Oh! Oh! Trouble!
- Clean and Gold
- Falling In Your Arms
- Even If I…
- Going To Heaven
- The Child In Me
- Red River
- I’m Alright
- Ghost In The Mirror
- C’mon C’mon
- On My Way
- You Are Loved
