The tunes of Durham writer Anna Rose Beck still seem in development. She is interested in weeping country and whispering folk, but to date, those compulsions pair strangely within her songs. But her voice is fully formed, with a reserved incandescence that would make numbers much less remarkable worth hearing. The clearest comparison might be Nick Drake, a singer who, like Beck, could express and arrest with unspeakably slight singing.  – Grayson Currin, 5/1/2013

An Austin, Texas native, Anna Rose Beck carries the weightiness of her clever, heart-wrenching lyrical wanderings with a voice that has been described as “both bold and understated, moving and hypnotic, brimming with passion but never overpowering,” inviting comparisons to Dar Williams and Natalie Merchant.  It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago, Beck didn’t sing or play guitar.  In fact, she first picked up the guitar one summer while in the course of completing a biomedical engineering degree at Duke and spent the subsequent school year juggling coursework and a newfound addiction to singing alone in her bedroom.  Completely transformed by her passion for songwriting, she began performing at local dive bars shortly after graduating and soon garnered a local reputation for her hushy middle-soprano intensity, finger-picked guitar lines, and evocative lyrics.  A mere two years later, after gathering a modest recording budget with the popular fundraising website Kickstarter, Beck collaborated with Asheville-based producer Andrew Schatzberg to record her 7-song, full-band debut EP The Weathermaker, released in summer of 2011.  Since then, she has won over audiences from Austin to Boston to Berkeley, and is in the process of writing and recording the full-length follow-up, to be released in the spring of 2013.