Opener Be Kind sets the tone for a debut record from Annahstasia built on finger-picked guitar arpeggios, understated keys, gentle percussion, and restrained strings, with emotional weight that lands like a hammer to the heart. Her voice has that rare quality of being completely commanding without ever needing to shout, quivering with the warmth of Tracy Chapman and the earthiness of Nina Simone.

The emotional terrain of Tether is deep and tender throughout, covering heartbreak, betrayal, reconciliation, and self-interrogation. It’s an album that makes you pause, feeling heavy without melodrama. Each word hits with a lived in sincerity, and while most of these songs live in a quiet, meditative space, they never feel small. Tether feels vast in the way stillness can be vast. Its power lies in space, as the guitars and pianos are played with an impossibly light touch. Rather than lunging for catharsis, this is music that hovers, considers, and lingers, mirroring the emotional weight of the songs themselves. The themes of heartache, regret, and longing are those you’d expect to find in the biggest and most explosive power ballads, but Annahstasia delivers them like someone trying, with every conscious fibre, to be understood. It’s the difference between someone screaming in the throes of an argument and a person quietly and deliberately explaining how they’ve been hurt (or how they’ve hurt someone else), trying desperately to be heard and understood. Every tremor in her voice feels vital and real.

Tether moves like a conversation, alternating between moments of hushed reflection and carefully built climaxes. Tracks like Be Kind and Unrest are built on lilting, major-seventh-laden chords with soothing harmonies, while others swell with choirs and crescendos. Even in those bigger moments, there’s a sense that Annahstasia is holding back, which is why the final track Believer lands so hard, feeling like a release the whole record has been circling. After 10 tracks of quiet poise, the six-minute closer swells until Annahstasia is belting with the force of a Whitney Houston ballad in an astonishing payoff that proves her restraint wasn’t about limitation but control.

The guest contributions fit seamlessly into the emotional landscape, with Obongjayar’s verse on Slow feeling less like a feature and more like an extension on Annahstasia’s own meditations. Poet Aja Monet’s appearance on All Is. Will Be. As It Was. is similarly tender, woven in to expand on the album’s emotional conversation. Tether isn’t chasing innovation or straining to sound current, leaning into something timeless and unmodern with unhurried pacing.

Annahstasia’s craft lies in taking the architecture of the power ballad, with its soaring melodies, emotional heft, and familiar song structures, and stripping it of its excess and melodrama to reveal songs that find power not in novelty or volume, but in deep sincerity and restraint. The emotions at the core of Tether are the same gut-wrenching themes that artists from Whitney Houston to Adele have always tried to evoke, but Annahstasia delivers them with a quietness that draws you closer and closer until you’re hanging on her every breath, with most songs resisting the easy, explosive payoff, inviting you to sit with the ache instead. When that final release comes on Believer it feels deserved rather than pompous. That Annahstasia has crafted a debut album this commanding is extraordinary.