Anna Rubin Releases Powehi Double Album
- R.A.G.
- Jul 1, 2025
- 4 min read
A new and very unique double album release from Anna Rubin brings together a combination of spoken word, operatic style singing, and gorgeous, theatrical compositions that create something with plenty of self-expression and amazing descriptive detail that takes you on these little, almost metaphoric Journeys while being quite literal at the same time.
The Powehi record is comprised of gorgeous, storytelling, and personality-riddled pieces of music that you can't help but connect with.
The first set of pieces on the record our focused around the nature of bees, and the songs get into how bees interact with humans but also paint a bit of a bigger picture in terms of the general association of humans and nature.
The piano work on these pieces, in particular, is absolutely astounding. It's got such a vivacious theatrical feel and puts you in the moment to an extent.
Listening to the first set of tracks, focusing on the bees, makes you feel like you're sitting and watching a play, and each piece from the first chunk of this record is like an act in that play.
It is all beautifully performed and has such an impact that you can't turn away from it. The entire aesthetic of it grabs at you and wraps itself around you. It gets your focus and attention, and you start listening and becoming part of what these songs are all about.
The complexity and intensity of the piano performances on this record are really what make the songs jump out at you. The vocals and piano are in line with each other in such a way that it feels wonderfully colorful in a sense.
The detail and depth that these pieces of music go into is amazing, and when you're done with those first eight pieces about the bees, you really have to reacclimate yourself back to wherever you are again.
It takes you off into this different place for a while, and I love that about it.
The second set of songs is focused on Powehi, which is absolutely influenced by both classical and jazz approaches, and these pieces of music are also theatrical and sort of intense, but they focus more on an almost scientific approach in terms of their lyrical or spoken word style content. Now, aside from the spoken word, there is some beautifully performed singing across the span of this record.
The vocal performances in terms of singing are what I meant by operatic. It feels sort of operatic, but that just could be because you get the sensation of that theatrical theme throughout the performance of this entire release.
It's all beautifully done, and she treats her vocal performance like an instrument itself.
Powehi is the Hawaiian term for black hole, and this is why you have such a raw kind of energy and scientific theme attached to this set of songs.
The narration is performed by Pamela Fields and the piano work by pianists Sandrine Erdely-Sayo and Cynthia Raim, who both perform with this amazingly, almost outlandish approach, giving much life to the songs.
This is quite an immersive record and as immersive as those first two sets of pieces get, when those are done you get to the last part of the record which is another slightly shorter set of almost ethereal songs, naturally filtered but digitally performed pieces that sort of pull you into their realm which feels somewhat fantastical, a little bit cinematic, and very different than the rest of the album.
For those final pieces of songs, you have such a beautiful combination of textures that are electronic or digital, if you will. These are outstretched and again, quite cinematic as they invite you along to float alongside these beautiful but slightly haunting tonalities.
I found that this was such a wonderful way to bring a different aesthetic to the record, and again, this is considered a double album, so in its entirety, it is 21 pieces of music, and some of those pieces range from 8 to 10 minutes in length.
So, there's a lot to soak in here, and this is a huge release, but if you have the time to sit down and soak it in, it's quite brilliant.
If not, I strongly suggest you do it segment by segment.
The nature and bees segment, or the first part of the record I mentioned earlier, consists of the first eight pieces. Tracks 9 through 15 are the Powehi pieces. Tracks 16 through 21 are those final and experimentally adrift pieces.
The whole thing is gorgeously put together, and you can tell there was a lot of attention to detail in not only the narration, singing, composition, and performances, but also the actual concepts of each separate set of songs from this release.
This is not one to miss, so even if you have to do it segment by segment, definitely check this out because it's outstanding.
You will be taken through these different concepts, and you will probably learn a little something along the way.
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