Seattle singer-songwriter, Anna Coogan … new album ‘The Wasted Ocean’

Beautifully crafted and oddly unsettling, Anna Coogan’s new release The Wasted Ocean places her incomparable voice front and centre. Driving banjos, soaring guitars, and swelling strings fuse Coogan’s indie-pop sensibilities with her Americana roots. Coogan’s most complex and engaging work to date, The Wasted Ocean is produced by Evan Brubaker (Rachel Harrington)and features Eyvind Kang (Bill Frisell, Laura Veirs), Edie Carey, (Shawn Mullins) Darrin Watkins (Vicki Martinez), and Colby Sander (Rachel Harrington), as well as long time collaborators Eric Hastings, Brooks Miner, and Daniele Fiaschi.

The Wasted Ocean was inspired by a childhood immersed in the musical traditions of maritime New England, as well as years spent on water, first as a whitewater kayaker and then as a fisheries biologist. The evocative imagery woven throughout The Wasted Ocean alternates between joyous and melancholy: streamers lifting in the western wind, Spanish flags and conquistadors haunting the ocean floor, threadbare sails and nets forever left to dry, lust and longing so powerful it could turn the tide.

The Wasted Ocean was released on September 26 in the UK and Europe, almost ten years to the day that Coogan walked away from a promising career singing opera. By now not even a trace of classical training remains in her voice. What has emerged in the intervening years is wholly different – more fragile, plaintive, and pure – it is, in the words of  The Missoulian (Montana): “touched by twang, drenched in sunshine.” The sunshine certainly shines through on this powerful new collection of material.

Artist Web Link: www.annacoogan.com