Anneke Van Giersbergen - The Turns of a Psychonaut

Anna Maria van Giersbergen, known as Anneke van Giersbergen, is one of the most talented and well-regarded female voices on the rock scene. Coming from a jazz background, this Dutch vocalist has indeed shown excellent vocal versatility, and over the years has cited as influences names of the calibre of Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, Kari Rueslåtten, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Initially devoted more than anything to having fun singing in clubs or bars without any great ambitions, as soon as she came of age at the start of the 90s, together with Deniz Cagdas, she founded the jazz-blues duo Bad Breath, while at the same time taking part in the debut of the experimental rock band The Mess (described as "imagine Frank Zappa meeting the Tubes"). However, her career is unquestionably tied to the Gathering, the band she joined in 1994, achieving recognition and acclaim. We cover this artistically very fruitful period in the monograph dedicated to the band; here, instead, we will trace the solo career of the Dutch vocalist.

After 6 official studio albums, 2 live albums and as many DVDs, marked by a profound sonic evolution (as well as by disputes with the label Century Media and the founding of the new Psychonaut Records), in 2007 Anneke left the Gathering to focus on her private life (touring had taken a heavy toll on her, keeping her away from her family) and on her solo career, which she had been planning to launch for some time: "Now I can direct every aspect of my life. After a lot of consideration and serious personal reflection, I think the time has come for me to change the direction of my life and set new goals to achieve", the statement reads. Her solo career would go on to show considerable variety both in the styles explored and in the final results, alternating effective, charismatic works with others that proved more disappointing.

Anneke's debut comes with her own newborn personal project, which she calls Agua de Annique and which features the participation of her husband Rob Snijders (formerly of Celestial Season) on drums. The record is titled Air and it certainly carries with it something of the fine attitude of the Gathering-sound, even if it doesn't reach the heights of the Dutch band's later work, settling instead into more conventional territory.

Air throws out interesting ideas and has several interesting songs in its quiver, but it remains far from the refinement and the arsenal of varied effects found on records like "Home" or "Souvenirs", with their subtleties. Overall, it's a sweet and melancholic, essential, intimate pop-rock record, at times modest and tinged with some dark undertones, with no great pretensions or ambitions beyond expressing Anneke's most personal feelings with a broadly minimalist attitude. Melancholic atmospheres run through the soul of the full-length, giving voice to Anneke's own testimony, as she reveals: "Over the last ten years I've turned many dreams and experiences into songs, and over the last six months I started recording a selection of very personal pieces". There are also a few slightly more guitar-driven moments, but they are not as defining as the calmer ones.

Overall, the record appears less original than the peaks reached with the Gathering and doesn't add much that's new to Anneke's career, alternating tracks that capture and enchant with a few points where it proves toothless. At times the impression is that this is a collection of Gathering B-sides. That doesn't mean, however, that it should be dismissed: there is indeed no shortage of enjoyable exceptions, starting with the opener "Beautiful One", with its catchy arpeggios and mournful tone recalling 1998's "Frail" (though the drums are too similar to Tori Amos's "Josephine"), or "Day After Yesterday" with its bittersweet piano.

Either way, the soul of the record still doesn't show the best that Anneke can offer, and there's also material with both strengths and weaknesses. The driving drums and thick distortion of "Witnesses" (still commendable for trying to sound different) aim to be gripping, but the chorus doesn't fully succeed in its intent, as if holding back from reaching a truly sweeping climax. "Yalin" is a rather bland Coldplay-esque ballad; "My Girl" is a faded reworking of Radiohead circa 95-97; "Take Care of Me" is a pleasant excursion between goth and pop which, despite being slightly repetitive, turns out much more interesting; "Ice Water" is likewise emotional even if mildly repetitive; conversely, the hard-oriented riff of "You Are Nice!" could have made for an interesting change of tone if the song weren't, this time, too repetitive.

It continues with ballads such as the excellent "Trail Of Grief", the acoustic "Come Wander With Me" (a cover of Bonnie Beecher) and "Sunken Soldiers", which partly echoes the Gathering's "Red Is A Slow Colour", and these are among the record's happiest moments. "Lost And Found" is one of the best songs of the bunch, sweet yet dark, evocative, without ever growing tiresome. It closes with a short acoustic piece that is, all things considered, lacking in bite, "Asleep".

Album summary: good ideas, and it's certainly worth at least a listen for Gathering fans, but it's pervaded by a certain sense of incompleteness. Had Anneke brought these songs to the rest of the band instead of releasing them as a solo project, letting them contribute to the arrangements and polish them, the result would probably have found its optimal expression.

A few months later, the album was reissued in a new version, Pure Air, this time credited to "Anneke Van Giersbergen with Agua de Annique," as if to underline that this is the singer's own solo project. The adjective in the title seems to suggest that it's also a "refinement" of the record, pushed further toward a more personal path shaped by the Dutch singer's most direct, genuine and essential inspiration (in other words, purer, precisely). Almost entirely acoustic, the album sounds far more intimate and singer-songwriter-like than Air. The instruments are diluted and pushed into the background, the arrangements favor subtraction over addition, reinterpretation by stripping away rather than adding, so that what stands out is Anneke's voice alone, around which the whole record revolves. All this has its downside in the excessive stretching of the formula, which risks coming across as rather monotonous and soporific, despite several very successful arrangements with strong melodic depth, and an atmosphere that's more evocative and personal than on the debut.

The album can in any case be split into two intertwined halves.

The first consists of covers, symbolically chosen from both international songwriters and a few Dutch names. The standouts are above all the opening "The Blowers Daughter" by Damien Rice, an open and dreamy collaboration with Dave Cavanagh of Anathema; the funereal, aching "Come Wander With Me," with its rarefied trumpets; and the more country-tinged "Ironic" by Alanis Morrisette.

But there's plenty of class in the other songs too, even if the presence of the original authors themselves dilutes their personality somewhat: the duets with John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) on "To Catch a Thief" are excellent, while the fairy-tale-like "Valley Of The Queens" by Ayreon, with its traditional folk sound complete with horns and strings evoking more medieval scenery, is enjoyable but sits slightly at odds with the rest. Either way, the name Arjen Lucassen will certainly draw in plenty of curious fans, as will that of Within Temptation for "Somewhere" (an acoustic piece in line with what's come before, without much novelty or surprise); a little less so the little-known Silkstone, for the placid and very sweet "What's The Reason." Closing things out is "The Power Of Love" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, in a strongly minimal and somewhat repetitive version.

The second half is made up of rearrangements of several tracks already found on Air, and its quality is uneven. "Beautiful One" in acoustic guise with male guest Niels Geusebroek of Silkstone, or "Day After Yesterday," with a female duet alongside the talented Marike Jager and alienating keyboards, take on an interesting new flavor. But other tracks like "Witnesses" rehash the album's fare without much conviction, failing to refresh the listen as much as the other reworkings do.

The intent nonetheless remains to express Anneke's most intimate feelings in the most direct, simple and essential way possible, as if to say "this is me in music, with my whole self." One last thought that naturally arises while listening to Pure Air is that Anneke, on her own, for the time being isn't quite able to show her best as a composer or arranger, and so needs someone to support her in that regard (as in the album's most successful tracks) so as not to come across as merely an excellent singer and nothing more. One can't help wondering, then, whether it might have been better to hold off on the Agua de Annique debut a little longer, taking the best from both paths explored by the two records, to achieve a result that was reasonably more inspired and better arranged.

In 2009 the sparkling Dutch voice delivers In Your Room, produced by Michel Schoots (Kane, Racoon) and Guido Aalbers (Bertolf, Miss Montreal) and released once again under the name Anneke with Agua de Annique attached. The album takes a lighter, more carefree direction: the melancholic, intimate arrangements of Air are completely abandoned, as is the more introverted, rarefied vein of Pure Air, in favor of songwriting in line with a highly melodic acoustic pop, accompanied by a markedly sweeter mood, as if to completely flip the musical soul shown previously.

But the result is simply poor: aside from, to some extent, "Hey Okay!" (a catchy, sunny track), the melancholic ballads "Wonder" and "Home Again" (with their mournful pianos and horns), the chorus of "Just Fine" (co-written with Devin Townsend), or the closing "Adore" (written by bassist Jacques de Haard with Cyril Crutz, which takes the record's acoustic, cheerful premise and projects it toward more intense, passionate territory), all of which prove above average, the rest of the album amounts to a series of more or less acoustic pop songs that water down Van Giersbergen's vocal potential with overused melodic sequences and little personality.

The best tracks still feel like outtakes, and the overall songwriting is stale and lacking in character: one has to wonder whether, for Anneke, this record wasn't a misstep dictated by haste and by the weight a name can carry over actual musical quality.

After finally shelving the Agua de Annique moniker to keep only her own name, and after releasing a forgettable live album, Anneke Van Giesbergen's next album arrives in 2012 titled, nomen omen, Everything Is Changing, forcefully stating that the Dutch singer's life (musical and otherwise) is now drastically different from the past. And the fact that everything has changed compared to her past (even her recent past!) is evident right from the promotional photos, which lean much more toward highlighting her femininity. The media promotion of Anneke's image raises some eyebrows, because this turn of events seems to clash with the friction of the Gathering's final period with Century Media (who pushed hard on Anneke's look, a choice she herself wasn't thrilled about). But there's no doubt that Anneke comes across as more at ease and carefree than ever: this is reflected in the sunny, open vein of her latest releases, and above all in the big single "I Feel Alive," which radiates happiness from every pore. But where she had previously erred on the side of naivety, yielding results lacking in verve, on this record she shows herself to be highly inspired melodically and extremely spontaneous. In truth, the album was written in collaboration with producer Daniel Cardoso and the other members of Agua de Annique; which still leaves us with some doubts about the compositional weight of Anneke alone. The result is nonetheless an outgoing set of very catchy, impactful songs, in which we can trace several strands: a more "hard-pop" one, made up mainly of sparkling, joyous anthems (chief among them "You Want to Be Free," which thrills with eighties-style pop-hard-rock guitar riffs and some of the most infectious choruses the Dutch singer has ever sung), and another leaning toward harder but somewhat darker tracks ("Stay," "Hope Pray Dance Play," "Slow Me Down" and "Too Late" are all weighty yet very melodic songs that, however, overindulge in certain commercial goth clichés, coming off as predictable and genuinely stereotyped, more so than on the rest of the album; the singer herself feels less than convincing in this evolution). But there are also softer digressions ("Everything Is Changing," which mimics Massive Attack's "100th Window" in a lighter version), piano ballads ("Circles") and more distorted moments providing contrast ("My Boy"). And it's worth noting how abundantly present the electric guitars and their distortion are, accompanying Anneke's successful vocal melodies. The impression is that these are all easily digestible tracks, perfect for live performance, where they promise rousing crowd singalongs.

Less than a year later the album is followed by Drive, as if to signal that Anneke is steering her own musical path alone. There are no real turns here, rather a consolidation of its predecessor's most prominent side, with the usual anthemic, radio-friendly tracks (the opening "We Live On," perhaps the best track of all with a memorable chorus), sunny-melodied ballads ("My Mother Said"), epic and catchy tracks ("Forgive me," "You Will Never Change"), more distorted moments ("Moment Jungle," where she duets with Hayko Cepkin). And the closing "The Best Is Yet to Come" really does seem like a promise.

Unsurprisingly, what stands out most are the irresistible choruses and Anneke's voice in great form. The album is the perfect follow-up to Everything Is Changing and crystallizes the Dutch singer's stylistic path, but there's less variety, which can be read either positively, as cohesion, or negatively, as repetitiveness. It's not an either/or: both qualities coexist on the record. Either way, these are two similar but highly listenable albums that go down in one sitting. Although, once the enthusiasm for Anneke's grit and energy wears off, a certain lack of originality becomes apparent, which might disappoint longtime Gathering fans. Both albums nonetheless remain collections of highly rousing tracks, especially live, and Anneke Van Giersbergen's vocal ability is undeniable whatever musical backdrop her voice happens to rest on. Drive is also the last studio album before 2021, an eight-year hiatus.

Over these years, though, Anneke hasn't just released solo albums: she's also taken part in various collaborations and guest spots on records by artists from all over, going back to the 90s. Earlier on, she'd already been called in by Farmer Boys for a cover of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down," and by Lawn for a few sporadic appearances. In 2006, however, she became a more pervasive guest presence on albums by Globus, Napalm Death (!) and the Wetton&Downes duo. But ever since leaving the Gathering, Anneke has gone wild, popping up pretty much everywhere, with mixed results: whether she appears on just a few tracks or across the whole record, in the studio or live, we count her alongside more than 15 different artists between 2008 and 2016, across the most varied musical genres and with steady regularity. Among them, we'd especially flag her ever-loyal friends Anathema and the wild, eclectic Canadian Devin Townsend. With the former she records two tracks on "Falling Deeper" and a pleasant acoustic live album in the same vein as Pure Air, alongside their frontman Danny Cavanagh, titled In Parallel (featuring singer-songwriter covers of Massive Attack, Fleetwood Mac, Damien Rice and Dolly Parton, alongside original tracks by both artists). With the latter, we find Anneke among the lead voices across the entirety of the albums Addicted, Epiclouds, the live album The Retinal Circus, Sky Blue and Trascendence, on which she takes part with renewed enthusiasm. These are albums that carry with them all the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian artist's work over the last 15 years, chiefly his eclecticism, bombast and melodic sense.

In the meantime, there's also room for the soundtrack to a Dutch children's musical show written with Martijn Bosman, De Beer Die Geen Beer Was.

A mysterious interlude occurred in 2009, when the ambitious project The Human Experimente was announced with great fanfare: a supergroup led by Robert Fripp of King Crimson and Maynard James Keenan of Tool. Anneke was supposed to take part as a guest alongside other big names. The collaboration, however, never came to fruition, and the only track the two musicians ever released was a cover of "In the Court of the Crimson King" before the whole thing was quietly dropped and forgotten.

Finally, the most important collaboration of all: the one with fellow Dutchman Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon. A partnership that began, long before anyone suspected how significant it would become, back in 1998 on Into the Electric Castle, and was repeated ten years later on 01011001 (in 2016 came the live album The Theater Equation, again featuring Anneke). The collaboration shows real chemistry and works remarkably well, to the point that the two decided to form the project Gentle Storm in 2014. The debut album, admittedly not essential, arrived the following year under the title The Diary. It's an atmospheric, mannered record split into two halves: one ("Gentle") is purely folk and symphonic, meticulously arranged and beautifully sung, though lacking in emotional punch and stylistic variety (it was also performed on the acoustic promotional tour alongside numerous covers ranging from Pink Floyd to Beatles); the other ("Storm") reinterprets the same songs in a hard & heavy key, adding a bit more color but losing atmosphere and indulging in a few clichés.

Meanwhile, the pair also took part in the second album by Lebanese prog-rocker Amadeus Awad, titled Death Is Just A Feeling. This three-way collaboration blends a bit of everything from all three artists' repertoires, mixing baroque arrangements, retro synthesizers, progressive-metal technicality, acoustic digressions and various nods to Pink Floyd, Pain Of Salvation and Dream Theater.

Also in 2014, Anneke teamed up with Liv Kristine (one of the leading figures of gothic metal in the '90s with Theatre Of Tragedy and in the 2000s with Leaves Eyes) and Kari Rueslåtten (singer on the first 3rd and the Mortal album, a major early influence on the Dutch singer, before she moved on to a solo singer-songwriter career in Norway) to form the trio The Sirens, with great initial enthusiasm. The three "girls" recorded two entirely forgettable new tracks to launch the project, then set off on a nostalgia-fueled tour revisiting classics (from almost 20 years earlier) from their respective bands. Despite their advancing years, their voices remained agile and crystalline, but the whole operation came across as a bit calculated. In any case, the project turned out to be a commercial flop despite the promotion behind it, and was quickly shelved.

Anneke found time to contribute to the soundtrack of the film "Apenstreken", as well as to record an album with Árstíðir, an obscure Icelandic folk group, released in 2016, on which atmosphere is the dominant element. A very sweet, hushed album, Verloren Verleden lingers on pairing Anneke's voice with sparse acoustic guitar notes and strings. There are no particular emotional outbursts; everything flows in a fairly uniform, cohesive way, with pleasant retro sonic counterpoints and multilingual lyrics. The result is solid, and this setting suits her well overall, in contrast with the energy of her most recent solo albums (recovering that flexibility that has always characterized her) and showing greater melodic expressiveness than her earliest solo records (which, mutatis mutandis, are comparable in mood and atmosphere).

In 2017 Anneke Van Giersbergen founded Vuur together with Marcela Bovio of Stream of Passion and various musicians from different bands, many of whom had already guested on Gentle Storm. The debut album is In This Moment We Are Free – Cities, a melodic prog-metal record in the vein of Devin Townsend's own band. Once again it's Anneke's voice that stands out, but the songwriting underneath is uneven, smothered by pompous riffs and monotonous structures. Despite this, the album achieved respectable sales.

For her, surely, putting her name to so many different projects is something more than a mere divertissement, done purely for the personal pleasure of pursuing it. But one can't help wondering what the point is of all these new projects the singer keeps launching with so many different collaborators, scattering time, energy and ideas across countless commitments, most of which, by their very nature, won't be able to last more than a handful of albums anyway (if nothing else, because all the people involved are starting to show their age).

2018 saw the release of the live album Symphonized, an ambitious orchestral reinterpretation with classical instruments (handled by the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra) of numerous songs from both Anneke's solo career and her collaborations. There's also room for a few pieces from her golden era with The Gathering ("Amity", which on this occasion sounds closer in tone to an Apocalyptica cover; "Travel", which retains the passion of the original in a more minimal form; and "Forgotten", which stays fairly close to the original but gains a few added strings). There's also a harpsichord rendition of the aria "When I Am Laid in Earth" from Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. The instrumentation is never excessive, and the approach seems to echo the 2014 live album "Sleepy Buildings", with everything revolving around Anneke's voice while the rest is kept sparse, albeit with a more emphatic touch in the atmospheres.

2021 brought the wonderful The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest. This time the Dutch singer turns to a delicate, stripped-back acoustic folk sound, and proves more inspired than ever. Every song is a small bittersweet gem, driven by the guitar against which her voice stands out, always at the center of the compositions. Anneke effectively captures a range of moods, with a faintly melancholic aftertaste, but more often openly joyful and sunny. The title itself reflects this direction, setting darkness against light, an optimistic vision of hope in the darkest moments.

Highlights include the opening single "Agape", the poignant "The End", the moving "Losing You" and the gorgeous closer "Love You Like I Love You", among the finest vocal performances of her entire solo discography. In some cases there's a greater balance with the instrumentation: for instance in "I Saw a Car", where voice and acoustic melodies move hand in hand in one of the catchiest and most evocative tracks; or in the moving "Hurricane", where the trumpet part stands out; in the clever country of "Lo And Behold" with its fantastic chorus, intriguing guitar and catchy percussion; or in the Spanish-tinged sounds of "Survive".

The vocal melodies have no trouble staying consistently appealing throughout. Thanks to the performances on display, listeners won't miss the guitar-driven punch that made Anneke such a fierce rockstar presence on her previous two studio albums. The fiery Dutch singer is today, without a doubt, a fully mature singer-songwriter: solid in her ideas, grounded, independent, and deservedly carving out her own niche in which to showcase her worth. She still has several other projects in the pipeline and shows no sign of wanting to slow down. Not bad for an artist who, back in 2007, felt so weighed down by commitments and the toll on her family life that she had to leave the band that had made her name. But rather than breaking into the charts, her goal remains to keep a loyal fanbase over time and keep playing what she truly loves: "I try to experiment with little things here and there, but in the end I always realize I need to write what I feel I have to write. Maybe that means I won't have a huge audience, but there will still be people who say they've been following me for years. [...] I don't need 7,000 people to play for to feel satisfied — I'd rather have 150 devoted ones who are genuinely interested in my music," she explains.

Our sincere hope is that she keeps that fresh, crystalline voice for a long time to come — one of the most beautiful and talented voices in rock.

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