There’s a digital connection that runs between Monument and Philadelphia. It’s a river of sorts bridging the heart and mind of Anika Pyle with her past. The singer-songwriter recently released her first solo album entitled “Wild River.”

This has been a goal for Pyle for quite some time. She grew up on in the shadow of Bald Mountain near Monument in a cabin that has since been torn down. Pyle attended Lewis-Palmer High School then moved to New York City to attend New York University.

While there she and fellow Monument resident Drew Johnson started the now-defunct punk band Chumped, touring and releasing several albums. Both played guitar while Pyle handled vocals. Dan Frelly, also from Monument, joined the band, too. He continues to play drums on Pyle’s current band katie ellen.

In October 2019, Pyle was invited to perform at the Philadelphia Free Library as part of a grant-funded musical series called “Song-Poems.” As she was preparing material for the event Pyle’s father passed away. So, the compilations she had originally prepared for the gig she gradually changed to reflect upon the grief that came from such a loss. Many of those songs and spoken word compilations are on “Wild River.”

The album cover for Anika Pyle’s first solo album, “Wild River.” It is set to be released Feb. 12.

Courtesy of Anika Pyle

“We’ve all lost so much this past year — loved ones, jobs, houses, in many ways life as we knew it. By the time the pandemic hit, I was already deep into a grieving process and learned you can’t stubbornly resist a wild, unpredictable, uncontrollable river, no matter how desperately you battle the current,” Pyle said of the album title.

Intended to be listened to straight through from beginning to end, the album follows the forward motion of Pyle’s life. “It pays homage to the bond my Dad and I found in practicing positive thinking and radical acceptance for our failures,” she says. It also features reflections from her paternal grandmother to acknowledge “the intergenerational inheritance of life perspectives.”

When someone loses a person like a father who loves unconditionally, life after their death becomes a process of grieving and searching for a way to continue without them. As Pyle puts it and as the album reflects, life is “learning to let go and move forward from grief.”

The record represents a softer indie-folk style blend of guitar and electronic pop than the punk music Pyle sang in her bands. She says, “This record is more authentic to what I want to make and listen to.” Listening to the works, one gets a look at the intimate details of Pyle’s sorrow.

She begins the story by pondering life’s mistakes. We all make them. Some so shameful we wish they could be shoved under the rug or covered like furniture. Instead, they stay with us until we do something with them, learn from them. As with any deep dive into emotions, and in a dusky voice akin to singer Shawn Colvin, Pyle starts at the bottom but digs out as the record plays.

The idea of failure comes up three times. The first instance leaves one to ponder whether we are defeated by them or if they allow for second chances. Although “Failure I” starts the listener out low emotion and hope lift from there. In the spoken “Failure II,” Pyle says, “If I hadn’t failed you, I wouldn’t see the beauty of failure. If I hadn’t failed you how would I know I could survive.”

Singer-songwriter Anika Pyle just released “Wild River,” a compilation album of songs and spoken word.

J.Flynn

Hope rebounds in “Emerald City,” where her voice is crisp, matching what sounds like the quick flick of a Vic Firth jazz drum brush. Pyle says the song is inspired by a drive through Coeur D’Alene, Idaho with the band. As they drove, she questioned why we are often caught in the midst of doing something else and don’t see the important details right in front of our eyes. Pyle thought of her dad and the tiny moments they shared, like fishing or drinking coffee.

“Prayer for Lonely People” maintains a happy rhythm while Pyle croons, “It’s always the little things that keep us up at night,” — something many of us with insomnia or too many things going on at once can comprehend. She follows it though by saying it’s the little things that can make it right.

“June” begins as if a funereal hymn, and the listener is reminded just how much Pyle sounds like singer Sharon Van Etten in her breathy, honest voice, “I’m doing the best I can with the hand that I dealt myself.”

The spoken word compilation “Mexican Restaurant” reminds us of all the tiny details with loved ones that we try to scrabble together after they pass. As daughter and father sat at La Fogata Mexican Restaurant in Denver, she says, “neither of us were strangers to failure.” Thinking back, she wants to keep his voice in her head forever, “grasping at it, frantically searching for some kind of neural lock box to put it in so I don’t forget it.”

It was her mother, divorced from him for years, who ultimately told Pyle of her father’s death. ”The funny logistics of death that you don’t know until you experience it.” She says now she wonders at such a huge rift in the universe, obsessively reviewing, searching for signs” that he had passed.

In “Orange Flowers,” Pyle wonders about the afterlife, as so many do. “I’m still forming my beliefs for what happens to people when they die.” This song sounds as though she is talking directly to her father, hoping he is free and happy, “like the biker you always wanted to be.”

Toward the end of the album, “Failure III” sums up what the listener wondered all along. “Everybody is a failer. Nobody is a failure.” Pyle says we aren’t defined by our worst behaviors, although society can shame label us. She notes failures looked at as a lesson are much easier to accept.

“Windy City” is a look in the rearview mirror of life to remember the good stuff. It begins with the sound of raining in the background. It’s a reminder that there are people out there, those closest to you who know your faults, but love you anyway. “The only thing that matters is when you are truly seen. It’s hard to lose those people in your life because you can never get them back,” says Pyle.

The singer-songwriter finds ways to give back whenever she can through art-based fundraising. “I’m grateful to have that platform,” she said. She uses it to better the lives of those around her. She has helped to raise over $10,000 for a variety of causes including transgender youth, undocumented families, sexual assault survivors and pro-Black policy.

“I don’t think any step toward justice is too late,” Pyle says.

She works hard to stay positive and find joy in the rituals of daily life. Especially in coffee, something she and her ”hippie carpenter” dad loved to enjoy.

Former Monument resident Anika Pyle has released a solo record entitled “Wild River.”

Autumn Spadaro

Pyle’s fee-based Patreon page, patreon.com/anikapyle, offers conversation, musings and first listens to new music. Membership starts at $5 per month. She will give a virtual performance for Patreon members on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m.

“Wild River” is set to release on Friday, Feb. 12 and can be purchased in vinyl or digitally on Pyle’s website, anikapyle.com. A full-color perfect-bound book of poetry and lyrics with original artwork accompanies the record, or can be purchased separately.

Pyle lives and works in Philadelphia. She is thankful to so many who made this journey possible including Earl Hammond, Karen Kennedy, the Morris family, the Ekboms, Fabiola Palestina, Ronna Smith, Beth Ferguson, Craig Kettles and Bob Foster.