Annahstasia's proximity to love — for and from others, in society at large, and deeply within herself — guides the spirit of her soulful, poetic folk songcraft. It is the elemental constant, alongside her distinctly resonant voice, shading the singer-songwriter’s music since her earliest self-taught recordings, back when a 17-year-old Annahstasia Enuke was discovered and propelled into the pressures of an industry that nearly stifled her greatest strengths.

 

Surface Tension is the rising troubadour's drink sum wtr debut EP. This project serves as a prelude to her upcoming album Tether, where she explores themes of disappointment and heartbreak, self-searching and discovery, power and grace, and most elementally — the spectrum of love. Surface Tension unfolds like a 3-part story tracing the unsustainable nature of past relationships, documenting what is, in essence, "a romantic war." 

 

Annahstasia has carried these songs with her on the road, sung them for friends and strangers, and evolved them over time alongside her personal revelations. The music sustains a gravity and clarity across its delicate use of instrumentation. Through saccharine horn and string arrangements, Annahstasia's voice rings true, open-hearted, and free. "I've come into the power of my voice as a medium," she says. "As a tool of expression, I am able to shape the emotional space around me.”

 

Annahstasia’s artistic resilience and dedication to process have yielded Surface Tension, a commanding glimpse into the next era in her artistry.

 

Recorded at the storied Shangri-la studio in Malibu with producer Jason Lader and an impressive range of accomplished musicians, Surface Tension finds Annahstasia at her most intentional, embracing a slower sound than previous projects, with vocals left bare and up-front, exploring the capacity of her gift with newfound latitude. Sessions were both measured and spontaneous in a setting she’d dreamt of for years. “Jason would call me up like, ‘hey, do you feel like tracking today?’ Usually I would be, so I'd pop over with my guitar and we would just record as much as possible, one-take after one-take,” she says. “We were just patiently searching for my best performance.”

        

That immediacy and sense of spontaneity is felt in the recordings. The recording process birthed a calmness that prevails throughout, a warmth and resolute beauty amidst the fleeting light of two lovers undone. 

 

“Saturday” is a pure expression of hope, written within a classic folk lineage. “This is the moment of falling in love,” she says. “Realizing that you want to show up each day and contribute to another person’s journey through time.” Above raw strums, organ drones, and back-lit hums, Annahstasia sings with conviction, “I wanna be the voice that’s in your head / I wanna be the reason that you get outta bed.”

 

Love’s ecstasy crashes down on “Sunday,” when doubt seeps in and the notion of partnership is revealed as a one-sided projection. “Maybe in a different timeline,” she wonders over a plaintive piano phrase, likening bodies to valleys and love to a seed that needs nurturing, she channels a wisp of baroque balladry. “It's a small solace that somewhere in another universe it all worked out.” The dissonance of miscommunication and lost connection overpowers in the end, a windswept crescendo of strings, horns, and exhales. “A feral last gasp,” she says, “the pain of letting go, something not going gently into the good night.”

“Stress Test” follows the fallout, searching for belonging, and taking stock of the residual harm left in the wake. “The Universe tests you to see if you break,” she adds. The instrumentation gradually swells around her guitar, first keys, then bass, saxophone, and percussion, as Annahstasia finds an apt symbol in the rarest gems — not diamonds, with their fabricated value in culture, but amber and pearls, the ones that require life. She accepts the trauma and the games we play with one another and moves on, delivering a captivating, jazz-inflected final coda.