Anna Mieke

Beguiling and really rather wonderful" - Uncut (8/10)

"...eight lengthy bouts of exquisite thrumming folk, like she's playing in a free-floating dreamtime" - MOJO (4/5)

Ireland’s Anna Mieke today released her transcendent sophomore album, Theatre, via Nettwerk. The LP has been earning great press from Uncut, MOJO, The Irish Examiner, Shindig!, Northern Transmissions and more, while its singles—“Seraphim,” “Mannequin,” “For A Time,” “Twin”—have earned additional praise from FLOOD Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Cool Hunting, and Guitar World, among others. Theatre envelopes listeners in the warmth of Anna Mieke’s world, radiating with an intense heat that lies closer to the desert or the jungle than her hometown of Wicklow, IE; stream/purchase it now HERE.

Theatre is the surreal soundtrack of a vast personal plain steeped in nostalgia, family, memory, death and dreaming—where gritty reality and romanticism meet. This duality is the thematic core of the album, but it’s ultimately more about sensation than theme. “Perhaps the music enables some form of dreamlike movement towards an imaginary place,” Anna Mieke says. “I’m just creating a sound world to escape to, built from moments in time. I hope it reminds someone else of their own experience…memories of youth infused with an intense warmth, like that childhood sensation of summer.” 

The album’s vivid soundscapes mirror Anna Mieke’s lush and adventurous upbringing; as a child, she cycled over The Pyrenees to Gibraltar, and lived and went to school in New Zealand (age 5) - "Climbing glaciers and an active volcano, trekking through jungles...I remember that otherworldly feeling, somewhere totally alien to all my senses,” she recalls of her time there. Theatre encapsulates this feeling. A captivating artistic statement, it finds Anna Mieke at her most assured and poetic as she contributes a challenging, exciting new voice to alt-folk.

More Praise for Anna Mieke and Theatre:

"The new song beautifully employs the richly layered sonic texture Anna Mieke cultivated in Theatre, with scratchy strings, flutes, clarinet, pattering drums, and acoustic guitar all featured in the mix." - Brooklyn Vegan on “Mannequin”

"Mesmerizing…The alt-folk track balances sensations both gentle and engulfing." - Cool Hunting on “For A Time”

"a warm embrace of stealthily picked guitar, saxophone ringlets, propelling drums, and a voice that's both decadent and woody, like temple-cleansing incense" - FLOOD on “Seraphim”

“...a lush, beautifully orchestrated composition that showcases her talents as an arranger and as a vocalist. That rollin’ ’n’ tumblin’ acoustic riff serves as the song’s centerpiece, and the perfect backdrop to its dynamic rhythms and dramatic string arrangements.” - Guitar World on “For A Time” (‘This Week’s Essential Guitar Tracks’)

"...a sweet sound of rolling hills and valleys, and finely portraying the dulcet atmosphere found in this bucolic alt.folk collection" - Narc

“...this entire record feels slightly hazed-out and blurred, a beautiful noonday dream” - Sputnik Music

“...an artist who brilliantly incorporates folklore, fantasy, and mysticism into music” - The Revue

"a colorful and life-affirming album, both sonically and lyrically" - Northern Transmissions

"Theatre dances with grand, expressive musical gestures...[it] entrances with every lyric, note and beat." - The Last Mixed Tape