Ecce Shnak Find Liberation in the Dissonance of “Anna O”

That philosophy is all over their new single, “Anna O,” the latest offering from the band’s forthcoming album, Dandy Variances, due October 23.

What immediately grabbed me about “Anna O” was its groove. There is something genuinely catchy anchoring the song, even as Ecce Shnak surrounds it with dissonant notes and deliberately uneasy musical elements. Those sounds continually rub against the groove rather than allowing you to completely settle into it. The result is a tension and instability that feels particularly appropriate once you begin digging into what… in my humble opinion… the song is actually about.

The song has an unusual origin. Per the band through their press release, for the first time, Roush, Ecce Shnak’s composer, bassist and baritone vocalist, handed over the lyrical reins. The words originated as a poem written by his mother, Robin Kneubuhl, months before Roush and producer Jeff Lucci created the instrumental in 2019. According to the band, the poem explores what Kneubuhl sees as tragic contradictions between the ideals of feminism and the ways those ideals can sometimes be misused.

At the center of all of this is a fascinating collision of identities. “Anna O” merges the imagery of Annie Oakley, the legendary sharpshooter, with Anna O., the famous pseudonym associated with one of the foundational cases in the early history of psychoanalysis.

The lyrics announce that collision almost immediately. Annie is handed her gun and encouraged toward violence, only to be warned that her actions might cause her life to unravel. Soon Annie becomes Anna, and the song arrives at its recurring demand: “Let the girl go!”

That refrain is deceptively simple. The more I listened, the more it seemed to sit at the center of everything happening around it.

One of my favorite aspects of the recording is the interplay between the male and female vocals. Much of “Anna O” features the two voices working in harmony, but Bella Komodromos’ female vocal is generally the more prominent presence in the mix. Considering that the song revolves around Anna/Annie and questions of female agency, that balance feels appropriate. Her voice becomes one of the musical elements guiding us through the character’s story.

But Ecce Shnak doesn’t maintain that hierarchy throughout the entire song.

Later, the relationship between the voices noticeably shifts. During the section beginning with “Annie, trigger-finger slow,” the male vocal moves forward while the female voice remains underneath it. That happens again during the song’s strange concluding passage, where Annie is encouraged not to quit before being sent off on her proverbial rocketship.

I can’t say precisely what Ecce Shnak intended by reversing the vocal emphasis, and assigning a definitive meaning to it might actually diminish what makes the choice so effective. But I found myself thinking about it.

So much of “Anna O” involves Annie being described, instructed, warned or encouraged. She is both the subject of the story and someone whose identity is continually being constructed around her. When the male voice suddenly becomes dominant, those words take on a slightly different character. The woman hasn’t disappeared from the recording. Her voice is still there, but another voice has temporarily moved in front of it.

Whether intentional or not, that creates another layer of contrast in a song already built around contradictions.

The official video pushes those ideas even further. Komodromos portrays Anna as a deeply distressed woman apparently confined within an asylum-like environment. She is restrained and seemingly subjected to examination or experimentation by figures exercising authority over her. Eventually, however, she frees herself from those restraints and turns the tables on the people holding her captive.

Watching that unfold while hearing the repeated demand to “Let the girl go!” gives the hook considerably more weight.

There is an obvious there of being unshackled in the song, but “Anna O” doesn’t strike me as particularly interested in making that liberation clean or comfortable. Violence, empowerment, confinement, identity and rebellion all crash into one another. Annie Oakley and Anna O. become less individual historical references than opposing ideas folded into the same character: the woman who is observed and the woman who acts, the patient and the gunslinger, the restrained figure and the person capable of breaking those restraints herself.

That is where the musical dissonance becomes especially effective for me. Ecce Shnak could have wrapped the idea in a straightforward rock anthem, but the uncomfortable notes and abrasive elements keep disturbing the groove. Something always feels slightly off balance.

Ecce Shnak calls its particular musical universe “Chamber Punk,” a combination of popular music, classical music and punk, and “Anna O” makes a convincing argument for the usefulness of that description. There are recognizable pieces here, including the grunge and alternative-rock vocabulary the band associates with acts such as Nirvana, Pixies and the Jesus Lizard, but the pleasure comes from hearing those pieces collide rather than neatly coexist.

By the time “Anna O” launches its heroine toward the heavens, I wasn’t particularly interested in deciding whether I completely understood her. I was more interested in the strange, tense and surprisingly infectious journey Ecce Shnak had constructed around her.

Maybe that is ultimately the point.

Anna has spent the song being examined, described, instructed and confined. Eventually, she doesn’t need us to figure her out…. She just needs us to let her go.