Annelies’s Mares LP (hop17) sold-out last year and was featured on end-of-year lists from The Wire, Boomkat, The Quietus, and Tone Glow to name a few. Recent live shows at Café OTO, Roadburn Festival and supporting HTRK in Brussels prove there’s no sign of her slowing down. Recorded at home in Gent between 2016 and 2023, I Sigh, I Resign retains the intimacy of Mares with it’s close-mic’d keyboards and vocals that capture every breath. Folk and early music are at the core of her sound but the palette of piano, organ, bass guitar, cello, synth and drum machine make it very much a document of the here and now. 

The cover features Annelies’s sketches referencing female artists from the Dutch Golden Age who, highly revered at the time, now serve as mere footnotes to Rembrandt, Vermeer et al. The cover sets the tone for the music within which deals with power structures, toxic environments, and questioning (his)tories. Standout tracks include the pounding rhythm and choir-like voices on Salt as well as the tense folk/post-rock of Simple Fractures (co-written with her Luster bandmates). The album’s most tender moment is a cover of Jean Ritchie’s Appalachian ballad One I Love played and sung by Annelies and her ten year old son. I Sigh, I Resign is an intimate piece of work that explores personal and general themes which, having played-out for centuries, are still depressingly relevant. Despite the suggestion of defeat in the title, I Sigh, I Resign is an affirming and defiant manifesto for growth and liberation.