ON-RADAR: Anna Burch

Through the power of subtlety, Anna Burch’s music explores topics of love, heartbreak, and insomnia, using her lyricism as a means of developing a deeper understanding for the nuances that rest at the core of the human experience. Originally from the coast of Lake Michigan, Anna Burch now resides in the heart of Detroit, where she continues to write music. Before her time as a solo artist, she spent much of her musical career as a bassist for Frontier Ruckus, touring with them full time after attending Michigan State, where she studied film and English Literature. After meeting Paul Cherry as a film graduate student at the University of Chicago, Cherry pushed Burch to try a hand at creating her own music; a choice that she eventually sided with after graduating. While she spent much of her post-grad career playing with Frontier Ruckus and Failed Flowers, Burch was simultaneously working on her own music, putting out her first album Quit the Curse in 2018, through the help of Paul Cherry who produced the record.

With the output of Quit the Curse, Anna Burch’s musical career was put on the map, as her swingy, honest lyricism sheds a light on the more difficult internal experiences that coincide falling in love and heartbreak. The album draws out themes of desire for an indifferent lover, another’s insight into expectations for her own public-image, dishonest feelings of loneliness, and the emotional emergence a partner only shows when high. Coupling such intensely felt experiences with an unapologetically stoic voice and loud bass, Burch’s lyricism feels powerfully honest, as her own verbal indifference represents the abandonment of hurt that can only occur through healing and realization.

In 2020 Burch released the softer, more openly reclusive second album If You’re Dreaming, which differed from the upbeat quality of Quit the Curse while still maintaining the unashamedly frank lyricism that so clearly defines her sound. With tracks that explore the unclouded insight found in cynically-driven self hatred and the simple beauty of being in a lover’s company, If You’re Dreaming’s effortless candor draws attention to the multidimensional power of love by challenging the shallow romanticization of it.

In 2021, Burch continues to play shows throughout the Chicago and Detroit areas. You can click here to stream If You’re Dreaming, and here to listen to Quit the Curse.