Janel & Anthony

Janel Leppin and Anthony Pirog have the kind of all-encompassing relationship that can render envy in everyone else. Long staples of the Washington, D.C., scene, they have ping-ponged between a few dozen different bands and collaborations, Leppin’s cello and voice and Pirog’s guitar touching a seemingly countless number of projects there. But since 2006, across three full-lengths, their most unguarded, intimate, and expansive work has come as the duo Janel and Anthony. Those albums have shared the sense of being let in on a domestic world they have built, where sonic possibilities are endless and feelings are spoken with candor and ease.

Their 2024 album, New Moon in the Evil Age, is a 19-track opus, split into two telling hemispheres. The instrumental first half hinges on the interplay between Leppin and Pirog, from the idyllic acoustic splendor of “Pacific Grove Monarch” to the haunted electric atmospherics of “Fog Curls Round Cypress” to the gothic Wes Montgomery sensation of “Slight Sense.” But on the back half, they shift into a kind of limitless art-pop, with the arcing “Innocent Human” evoking The Cranberries and the beat-machine-driven majesty of “Evil Age” suggesting a more psychedelic Cocteau Twins in miniature. Janel and Anthony’s albums and shows both feel like reflections of their at-home enthusiasms, a couple letting us in on the music they like to make together; it is a gift to be allowed to hear it.