Weekend Intermission – Anna Calvi (UK) – Is this all there is? (EP)

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

It seems almost as long since astronauts last went to the Moon as the last Anna Calvi full album, ‘Hunter’, almost eight years ago. Perhaps she got embarrassed by constant nominations for The Mercury Prize and opted to let someone else have a go.

The virtuoso guitarist and operatic-like vocalist has hardly been redundant since, what with reinterpretations of tracks from her ‘Hunter’ album in the EP ‘Hunted’, featuring an eclectic mix of contributors; scoring two of the television Peaky Blinders series; involvement with various spin-offs from it; helping with assorted other film scores; more recently contributing to David Lynch memorial gigs and starting a family. But I had begun to wonder if we would ever hear new work from her again.

The EP ‘Is this all there is?’ was released on 20^th March, is the first of a promised trilogy and comprises two new songs, and two covers.

According to Anna Calvi in assorted online statements this short collection concerns “mystery – the awe and wonder it can create”; her own “transformative perspective shift” after becoming a parent; and “the bravery it takes to believe there’s more to life than what I’ve come to expect.”

All of this prompted her to ask most basic existential human question – is this all there is (?)”

To be honest, those statements confuse me a little. That there is more to life than one might anticipate while at the same wondering if this is all it amounts to doesn’t compute.

What I suspect might be at the heart of it is her continuing search for identity, something that Calvi has long grappled with, coming to terms with her own sexuality, managing the contrast between her quiet, shy offstage self and her aggressive, powerful onstage persona, and more pragmatically seeking to nail that identity through intimate collaborations like this.

And one might take a similarly perplexed view about the four tracks and their huge diversity.

The new songs are ‘God’s lonely man’, a Morrissey-style title if ever there was one and featuring contributor Iggy Pop, and the title track, in which she duets with The National’s Matt Berninger on one which seems like a variation on her own (unreleased) ‘Drive’, from film ‘The Souvenir Part II’ soundtrack, and which itself bore more than a passing resemblance to some of her earlier work.

Sandwiched between them are a weird and wonderful take on Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ with esteemed American avant-garde artist, musician, filmmaker and multimedia presenter Laurie Anderson (who might be filling a void left in Anna Calvi’s life following the departure of David Lynch, who was a huge influence) and, together with Perfume Genius, an interpretation of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s ‘I see a darkness’.

Together, the tracks are something of a mishmash.

‘God’s lonely man’ is a glorious glam/psych rock reprise with an intro that could belong to The Sweet and which got infected virally by Calvi’s screeching, siren-like guitar – and with more than a passing nod to Iggy Pop’s own ‘The Passenger’.

Vocally, Calvi and IG play off each other perfectly as indeed she has done with the likes of Talking Head’s David Byrne in the past, Calvi screaming with desire towards the end as if she’s Mia Farrow and she’s just encountered Beelzebub in the spare bedroom.

On the cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s (Will Oldham) ‘I See a Darkness’, Calvi performs with Perfume Genius.

The original is a sparse, gloomy acoustic guitar ballad about depression, mortality and male bonding. Purists might dislike this cover but between them Calvi and Perfume Genius have managed to make it even more haunting, with layers of synthesiser, Calvi’s trademark doom-laden reverb guitar sound (I assume she’s still using the battered Telecaster she’s had forever) and again great vocal interplay between the two singers, alternating power and fragility, and with the lady very much on top.

Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ is almost old enough to have been a soundtrack to the ‘supermarionated’ TV puppet series Fireball XL5 as it accompanies the spaceship’s autopilot Robert the Robot “on our way ‘ome.”. (And I’ll wager no-one reading this can recall that series!)

It’s the sort of work that it’s hard to imagine Anna Calvi covering or even wanting to and at less than half the length of the original it does make you wonder why she did. At first it is difficult even to recognise the original as it focuses so heavily on Laurie Anderson’s grave vocals when there was so little lyrical content to start with against a background of a repetitive brush strokes’ beat on a snare drum and the ever-growing eerie noise that accompanies astronaut Bowman’s journey through the Stargate in 2001 – A Space Oddity (and which is the best part of the whole track).

And there is the fact that the original message, about sad people sat at home trying to find love through electric wiring, has become somewhat passé today.

It’s original for sure but about as abstract as a Kandinsky painting.

The EP plays out with the title track, in which Anna Calvi duets with Matt Berninger in what she aspired to be a rousing new version of the aforementioned film song and it does just that.

This is where Anna Calvi excels and it is evident in how similar it sounds to the opener, ‘God’s lonely man’. She knows by now what works best. The grandiose production with power-laden echoing guitar chords punctuated by little breathers in which the resident Calvi philosophy takes centre stage.

By the time she gets to the vocal eruption around the 3:45 mark the goose bumps are already growing their own bumps.

So, two tracks that would have made for perfectly acceptable singles, one questionable one and a final one that brings the house down.

The question on most followers’ lips I guess is where does Anna Calvi go from here? Will she ever return to making original solo material or does her future lie in collaborations like this?

I seem to recall either an article or a post of hers on social media a few years ago in which she said she had enough material for a new album but was debating whether it was “good enough.” And I have it on good authority that long time friend and band member Mally Harpaz had been working with her on new material since then.

For what it is worth I still rate Anna Calvi as the #1 female artist in the UK but it seems to me she has reached a tipping point where she needs to make a decision. Collaborations may be intriguing but that’s about the measure of it.

It is not for lack of talent. Anyone that can provide the score for two series of one of the most watched British TV dramas of all time must be dripping in it.

And she still has a Mercury Prize to win.

Oh, and just in case she ever reads this, can I ask her to think about approaching Alex Rex – a collaborator in his own right with Bonnie “Prince” Billy in the past – to write something together? One of the most innovative artists on the UK scene and a man acknowledged to “wring about as much emotion out of a song as is humanly possible.”

NMC rating: 8/10

(Continues after the Spotify link)

Find her on:

Website: https://annacalvi.com/