*Note: This post was written by new BFF.fm volunteer Zero LaForga. Welcome to BFF.fm, Zero!

This week, folk singer and songwriter Anna May released her newest single “The Cliff,” as a much-anticipated followup to her last track, “Elegy.”

Anna states that the track was “written from the precarious juncture of dreams and reality” and comes to question both life itself and the human experience. Throughout the song, Anna confronts feelings of euphoria, acceptance, frustration, regret, longing, bitterness and envisioning, as well as the desire to traverse the unknown. Anna has very carefully chosen the image of the cliff for all it represents: dissatisfaction, sensationalism, hysteria, shock, and peace.

However, Anna not only strives to tell stories and discuss life at large, but to immerse her audience into a sonic landscape. This is especially true for “The Cliff,” in which she takes listeners on an eight minute long journey filled with her lush and lilting voice and the warm strums of her guitar. Its lyrical honesty and sonic simplicity is reminiscent of Elliott Smith with a bit of early 2000’s pop and country twang. And while you listen, you find yourself suspended in time, almost as if slowly falling.

Throughout the track, there’s a tinge of uncertainty and mysteriousness. Anna uses these elements not only to call us back to the song’s central themes, but to really mirror the experience of standing on a cliff. And much like a cliff, the ending leaves you to wonder what really happens — whether or not you'll fall.

Listen (and buy! support artists!) to "The Cliff" on Bandcamp.