Anna Nalick, Skyloft
Remember high school chemistry class? Anna Nalick does. In a 2018 interview with Billboard, she recalled encountering the word “catalyst” in class. She liked the word and used it as the title of a song on “Wreck of the Day,” her hugely successful 2005 debut album. “At the time I didn’t really think about it. I guess I found metaphors in everything,” she told Billboard, adding, “Thinking back on having written my first album in class in high school: things like that make me laugh all the time.” Nice to have something from high school to look back on fondly. “Wreck” went gold and drew some fairly rapturous praise. Allmusic frothed over what it termed “Nalick’s irresistible blend of crisply poetic lyrics, haunting melodies, rich sense of harmony, and ethereal ambience.” The album’s success, boosted by the smash hit “Breathe (2 AM),” left Nalick, then just 21, under pressure for an encore. Creative conflicts led her to leave her record company, and it was six years before she independently released a followup studio album, “Broken Doll & Odds & Ends.” She took a break from music to study writing and acting, then felt the muse again. With the help of a crowd-funding drive, she released her third studio album, “At Now,” in October 2017. On her Facebook page, she describes the album as “a breakup album of sorts, but only to get to the richest part; new life, new eyes, the choice to love and let love kill you, build you, enlighten you, to throw out the old language and find a new universal one. It’s about the romance and sexiness in letting a broken heart bring you home to nature with wide open eyes and the desire to take what’s human and make it beautiful again.”
■ 8 p.m. Sunday. $18$50. Skyloft, 1 Crossgates Mall Road, Suite 200, Albany. 518-8695638. skyloftny.com.