Artist Profile: Anna Justen
Anna Justen’s musical journey began as a child, making up songs in her head and, eventually, creating her own notation system so that she could capture and remember melodies in her notebook. As listeners of the Seattle indie scene, her parents introduced her to Grunge and Punk music as well as early-2000s staples of that region: The Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie.
She quickly began teaching herself guitar and piano, but didn’t begin pursuing music seriously until she was at University. This was spurred by a realization that she had not only the capabilities to do so but also an imperative: “I had a moment of realization that, if I woke up and I was 80 years old and I hadn't pursued music, I would have felt like I wasted my life.”
Through her roots in Seattle and artistic formation in the underground scene of Montreal, Justen has developed a sound which blends the purity of folk songwriting with the angst and experimentation of alternative composition. With her latest singles, “Individualism” and “Peppermint”, Justen has arrived in full artistic form, showcasing the massive strides she has taken into the sound she has been trying to formulate for years.
“I always knew I wanted to expand the sound outside of just me and the guitar, but when I started, that's what I had access to.”
Her earlier EPs, namely “Morning” and “Saintclaire”, settle primarily in the territory of singer-songwriter, combining her wit and dream-like vocals with gently-stacked acoustic guitar melodies. However, her work recently with artist and producer Milan André Boronell has allowed her to unleash a fuller sonic range.
“I think it was the fact that he has way more experience and he's into that glitchy sort of sound, that I finally had the means to be able to [execute]. I could kind of expand my mind in a way that I wasn't able to with [just] my own abilities.”
Boronell and Justen are currently at work co-producing her debut album, “Michou’s Dream”, which, while leaning heavily into her new paradigm of composition, will maintain much of her trance-inducing songwriting and vocal capabilities. In fact, more than anything, the project will be a true return to her roots in Seattle.
The name “Michou” refers to her childhood cat, and the album is meant to capture what she imagines its dreamscape must have been like, commingling the desires of infancy with the harsh realities of family life and maturation. In addition to her family members’ voices being sampled throughout the project, Boronell even flew to Seattle last Winter to record organic sounds from around Justen’s childhood home, capturing the organic seeping of reality into dream.
She aims, ultimately, to have a “world around [her] music”, expanding her creations into thoroughly enmeshed conceptual realms. Her new project will feature a host of visuals that serve to supplement this vision.
With her next planned single, “Orange”, Justen gives an homage to her mother: a personal letter of gratitude for the things that often go unnoticed in parenthood.