A few songs into ANAMAI’s set at Black Squirrel Books, the audience sat down on the hardwood floor like a group of mesmerized school children.
“I like to kind of give people the permission,” said guitar player and lead vocalist Anna Mayberry. “It kind of just suits the vibe—sometimes we bring blankets . . . You can sit down and close your eyes and not worry about what movements you’re making or what people think of you.”
ANAMAI released a debut album, Sallows, in March. Mayberry, a Toronto-based dancer and musician, is the creative force behind the project.
“I wasted my days, can’t you love me some other way/oh you let me down sometimes,” she sang repeatedly in the hauntingly otherworldly “Lucia.”
“I like music to bring me to a slightly different place—like a place I don’t know or I don’t understand,” Mayberry explained.
While the songs on the album came from a place of sadness, “the act of playing it or listening to it is a bit of a cathartic act—you move through it from singing it,” she said.
Mayberry said she “grew up in a house with a room full of books,” so the bookstore was a comforting venue for her.
She said she especially enjoyed performing the song “Otolith” during her set.
“I forgot most of the words halfway through,” she explained. “I think sometimes when something is forgotten or it goes differently than you expect, it lets you kind of break out of your routine and it lets you experience it a little bit more immediately.”
Guitarist David Psutka said the band doesn’t rehearse because they are focused on the atmosphere of the show than musical precision.
While Mayberry is the chief songwriter, Psutka is concerned with ANAMAI’s sound design and ambience. He said he tries to create a “3D environment of sound,” through delay and reverb.
Before ANAMAI’s set, a bright purple wig-wearing Sam Secord set the mood for the evening with a smoke machine and some atmospheric psychedelic pop.
A member of the Ottawa acts Organ Eyes and Blue Angel, Secord performed at Black under the name “Pippahauntas.”
“I think I have to work more on being more crazy,” she said of her act. “Definitely the visual is very important to me.”
Secord said she had to cut her performance short because some of her beats weren’t coming through.
“[It] was too bad—but then there’s more songs for next time,” she said.
