Daneshevskaya

Daneshevskaya (Dawn-eh-shev-sky-uh), the project of Anna Beckerman, writes songs steeped in the folklore of her own personal history. Beckerman grew up in a musical family; her father is a music professor, her mother studied opera, and her brothers played various instruments in the house. She learned piano from her father's grad students, and before experimenting with writing her own music, would sing the prayers she was taught attending synagogue. Her own songs often feel spiritual, less so by any religious connotation and more as a hymn-like, archival record of Beckerman’s own past, present and future. “The fun part of music is connecting with people, that’s how I was raised,” she says.

While her debut EP Bury Your Horses stitched together the fixed points and mysteries of human connection, Long Is The Tunnel (her first on Winspear) contemplates how the people you meet impact the pathway you travel. Beckerman has lived in New York City all her life, but her artist (and real middle) name comes from her Russian-Jewish great-grandmother, a person whose presence she has always felt although their paths never crossed in real life. Both her grandparents passed away while she was writing the songs that make up Long Is The Tunnel, and as much as stories about her grandmother (who was also a poet and teacher) feel like “a version of me in the past,” they ignited a burning curiosity to color in the lines of where Beckerman came from. She often re-read her grandmother’s letters, which “conveyed longing in such a subtle and satisfying, realistic way,” a sentiment that can be applied to Beckerman’s own music. Songs like the poignant “Somewhere in the Middle” immortalize the people in her life as she leaves them behind (“I’ll never see you again”), and the way recreating the past often brings dark truths to the surface. Despite bleak realizations, the EP paints a distinctive collage between traditional songwriting and modern turns of phrase that remain spellbound in the unadulterated luster of self discovery.

By day, Beckerman is a social worker for preschool kids in Brooklyn, and her music often pursues the child-like purity of life lived when everything feels high stakes. “When a kid says goodbye to their parent at the start of the school day, part of them feels like they’ll never see them again,” she explains. Long Is The Tunnel emphasizes that feeling of total heartbreak. “Saying goodbye to people is such a mystery to me,” she says. Written over a period of years beginning in 2017, the seven songs read as both patchwork memories/diary entries and elegies to those in her life. Co-produced by Ruben Radlauer of Model/Actriz, Hayden Ticehurst and Artur Szerejko, the final versions of these initial demos also saw contributions from Lewis Evans of Black Country, New Road (saxophone), Maddy Leshner (keys) and Finnegan Shanahan (violin), adding to the gleaming instrumentation that makes each song sound like a world within itself.

Beckerman emphasizes that she usually is drawn first to lyrics when listening to music. “A lot of how I learned to write songs is through poetry, which to me is a new way of thinking about language.” Following in the footsteps of her grandmother, the new EP pairs classical structures all twisted up with distinctive metaphors that are both otherworldly and grounding. Long Is The Tunnel is filled with hyperreal imagery that denotes a form of escapism: two of the songs reference birds, which Beckerman describes as about being transfixed by something you can’t take your eyes off while also being able to leave at will. “I love art that makes you feel like you’re underwater,” Beckerman has said in past interviews, and Long Is The Tunnel prolongs this feeling of being completely immersed: by desire, emotion, and fantasy. At the same time, “songs like [Pink Mold] are about me trying to learn a different version of love,” she explains, one in which she doesn’t need to surrender. The somber melancholy of her love songs are often more manifestations to her internal self than anyone else. What she’s really seeking is the independence of a healthy relationship, or, as she explains: “we’re not gonna belong to each other but we’ll share this life.” Often, these enthralling fairytales cut off: “I am not the one, I am not the one” she chants on shimmering closer “Ice Pigeon,” where repeating phrases are more like incantations born into the wild of a new existence, alone and for the better.

Both the titles of Bury Your Horses and Long Is The Tunnel reference specific car games, the latter in which you guess the amount of seconds the tunnel will last. Beckerman maintains an architectural watchfulness that presents itself through each song, slowly building out a world past her vantage point. “There’s a place where oceans meet/and a darkness underneath,” she dreams in the folky lilt of “Challenger Deep.” The closer you come to understanding someone, the more their flaws can be revealed. After all, love is just a means to an end: “It’s all in perfect order/On the way down (“Roy G Biv”)”.