Biography

"Anaïs sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details … are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things."
— Hugh Blumenfeld, Sing Out!

From her current home base in a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Vermont, Anaïs (“uh-NAY-iss”) Mitchell writes songs that are as intimate as conversations and as rich in detail as short stories. The daughter of “hippie back-to-the-landers” whose father was a novelist and English professor, she remembers her family’s home (another farmhouse in the same state) containing “a library full of novels, and lots of old folk and psychedelic rock albums. The books and the records all lived in the same room, which I am sure led to me thinking of songwriting as a kind of literature, a noble poetic enterprise.”

No surprise, then, that the reference points of her music may seem to come from all over the map while still interconnected: the country ballads of the Carter Family, the hard-edged cabaret of Brecht and Weill, the story-songs of Randy Newman, the vast narrative scope of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and the intricately crafted tales of her namesake, bohemian feminist Anaïs Nin, to name a few.

All of these influences come together in Hadestown, an epic “folk opera” retelling of the Orpheus myth. The saga of the poet who ventures into the underworld to rescue his dead wife—a tale now set in a post-apocalyptic world of poverty— began as a live performance created in collaboration with fellow Vermont artists director Ben t. Matchstick and arranger/orchestrator Michael Chorney. In their neck of the woods—TV-less by choice, far from big cities, in a land of radical politics and culture—making your own entertainment, and getting your friends and neighbors to help you flesh it out, is the only way to go. After fine-tuning the show, the trio gathered a cast of two dozen, commandeered a silver-spraypainted schoolbus, and hit the road (and several blizzards) for a couple of ragtag DIY tours of New England. The next logical step? Hadestown, the album, performed by a dream-team lineup including Ani DiFranco, Justin Vernon/Bon Iver, Greg Brown, and Mitchell herself, among others.

Mitchell may have grown up in the middle of nowhere, but she’s seen more of the world than you might expect. “I always traveled a lot as a kid,” she recalls today. “My mom had a little axiom about things it was OK to spend money on: ‘food, books, travel, and friends.’ (We later amended that to include records.) My parents wouldn’t buy me a cool jacket or a videogame or whatever, but they would ship me off to Europe or Japan. Later I ended up studying in Costa Rica, Austria, and Egypt. I always loved languages and the feeling of being out of context—which is maybe why I love traveling as a songwriter now… It feels natural.”

It also felt natural, after she had plenty of original songs under her belt, to start getting them out to the world, so in 2002 she took an early stab at recording a self-released album (now out of print), and two years later she made the disc she considers her true debut: Hymns for the Exiled, released on the Chicago-based indie Waterbug Records. That project brought producer/musician Chorney into the mix as a frequent collaborator.

A copy of Hymns gradually made it to DiFranco, who offered to release her next album, The Brightness, in 2007, followed by a unique vinyl/CD collaboration with fellow singer/songwriter Rachel Ries, Country E.P., in 2008, and now the Hadestown recording. The Brightness inspired a reviewer from the Boston Globe to praise Mitchell’s “vivid snapshots of sweetly ordinary moments,” while Acoustic Guitar called her "a songwriter of startling clarity and depth, equally skilled at turning a melody or lyrical phrase into what you didn't know you needed until you heard it,” adding that she “weaves her stories into an effortlessly beautiful and cohesive tapestry with the skill of an artisan's carpenter, showing no seams.”

Anaïs Mitchell is the rare musician who is equally comfortable wielding an acoustic guitar alone onstage, sharing a disc’s worth of alt-country duets, or scripting a vast operatic journey into the underworld. She’s a fearless explorer, and her world just keeps getting larger.

 

Reviews

FULL PRESS KIT (PDF download)

Reviews for COUNTRY EP...

By Alan Pedder

WEB love for THE BRIGHTNESS...

Sing Out! Article by Hugh Blumenfeld

Sing Out! Review by Rich Warren

No Depression Review by Russell Hall

AllMusic.com Review by Margaret Reges

Popmatters.com Review by Aarik Danielsen

MORE REVIEWS of The Brightness (Righteous Babe Records 2007)

Reviews for HYMNS FOR THE EXILED...

Fish Records Review of Hymns For The Exiled

Quotes

"Anaïs Mitchell is already known as a phenomenal singer-songwriter, but now she has proven herself to be a brilliant poet and playwright with her new album Hadestown." - Muruch.com :: Read More

"Speaking of The Low Anthem, The Low Anthem's Ben Knox Miller recently joined Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Greg Brown, Ani DiFranco, and Petra, Rachel, and Tanya Haden to play on the new record by Anais Mitchell, Hadestown..." - Brooklyn Vegan :: Read More

"When 98% of what passes as music today lacks even the remotest twinge of an idea, thought, emotion or worse--heart--Hadestown and Anaïs Mitchell deserve all the listeners and accolades we can give. Pass it on." - Folk and Acoustic Music Review, March 2010

"The music ranges with classic American folk forms: country gospel, ragtime, blues, and early jazz, to approximations of rock, swing, and avant-garde -- all of it immediate, accessible, and inviting. ...Mitchell doesn't make herself the star, but is nonetheless. She is convincing as Eurydice; her lyrics are poetic, and her melodies unpretentious, yet sophisticated thanks to Chorney's arrangements. This 57-minute work goes by in a flash. Artfully conceived, articulated, and produced, Hadestown raises Mitchell's creative bar exponentially: there isn't anything else remotely like it." - Allmusic.com, March 2010

"...a superb and frequently entertaining re-envisioning of a classic tale that also happens to be a ripping good story. ... It's a surpassingly strange and moving work, quite unlike any music I've ever encountered, and further evidence that weird can be wonderful, particularly when the lyrics are as insightful and the music as beautiful as this." - Paste.com, March 2010

"...gritty, intelligent folk-pop and soul-flavored music that sometimes also evokes Brecht/Weill..." - Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2010

"An album you can savor over and over again..." Burlington Free Press, March 2010

"It's a musical opera that's unlike any opera you've ever witnessed. It's Indie rock mixed with Dixieland. It's Homer's Odyssey as performed by Pink Floyd." - blogocritics.org

“A songwriter of startling clarity and depth, equally skilled at turning a melody or lyrical phrase into what you didn't know you needed until you heard it... fearlessly emotive...like Dylan, Cohen, and Welch, Mitchell weaves her stories into an effortlessly beautiful and cohesive tapestry with the skill of an artisan's carpenter, showing no seams.”
- ACOUSTIC GUITAR

“Girlishly sprite and brimming with innocence... brings to mind the hippie-throwback charm of Victoria Williams, though... people more commonly note a resemblance to '80s pop star Cyndi Lauper.”
- NO DEPRESSION

“The earthiness of Shawn Colvin, the child-like bite of Joanna Newsom, and the urban jumpiness of Ani DiFranco... These elements, as disparate as they might seem, come together as nicely as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg...”
- ALL MUSIC GUIDE

“In Mitchell’s universe, there is no light between the personal and the political, the venerable and the radical... she brilliantly intertwines the mundane and the profound, singing with the same intimacy about a carefree night on the town and wandering the warring towns of Israel. Her vivid snapshots of sweetly ordinary moments spin suddenly outward to bemoan the eternal woes of poverty and militarism.”
- BOSTON GLOBE

“Anais sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details of silverware and napkins, capes and shoes, the unexpected pooling of light, are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things. These are observations that might be torn from journals, and like her journaling namesake, her real eroticism is saved for the world. That's why, like her heroines Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams, there's a sexual ambiguity about her work and why, even in her most intimate moments, she never sounds like a confessional songwriter.”
- SING OUT!

High Resolution Photos

Anais Mitchell | Hadestown	Anais Mitchell | Hadestown
Anais Mitchell | Hadestown	Photo by Louisa Conrad
Photo by Louisa Conrad

Downloadable Posters