Anna Wise is a Brooklyn-based artist who first came up in the late ‘00s as part the group Sonnymoon before branching out as a solo artist in the mid-2010s. In 2019, Wise released her first full-length solo album, As If It Were Forever. In February of 2020, Wise was in Los Angeles for a residency done in partnership with Gxrlschool called Re/Birth, where she rearranged much of the material for her album. Then, of course, the world went to shit and Wise couldn’t tour any more, so on the one year anniversary of the release of As If It Were Forever, she went to The Outlier Inn in Upstate New York with John Bap, Joy Morales, and Juwaah, and played these new arrangements live in a geodesic dome and recorded the performance live. Now the results of that trip are finally here for us to enjoy in the new album, Gently Powerful, Live (As If It Were Forever).

If you’ve only heard Anna Wise on her album, you might be thrown that this isn’t simply a straight live performance of the songs as they appear on AIIWF. However, if you’ve had a chance to catch Wise perform live in the past, you know that she likes to play with loops and effects and just toy with the audience’s expectations and feed off their energy. Knowing that, once you press play on Gently Powerful, Live, everything will make sense as the album now comes at you as this re-interpreted avantgarde version of itself. Compositions get drawn out and pop song formats are thrown out the window as Wise takes you further in the direction of experimental electronic music, with a touch of free jazz for good measure. It’s definitely an experience you have to sit with and just let it absorb as you meditate on all of the vocal loops, pedal effects, synth sounds, bass, and percussion play off of each other. It also makes it hit that much harder when you get to “Nerve,” the closest you get to a pop song on the album, but only if a pop song can also be described as following the lineage of Laurie Anderson and St. Vincent. It’s a short lived moment, though, as we quickly steer back into left field, culminating in an emotional and driving six-minute version of “Balance in All.”

Gently Powerful, Live (As If It Were Forever) is not for the casual listener of Anna Wise’s music, but for the adventurous fan that has put the time in over the years. You will be deeply rewarded with the inventiveness, energy, and passion put into pushing her music further into the experimental realm here.