Welsh singer-songwriter The Anchoress (aka Catherine Anne Davies) has released her latest single The Art of Losing, the titular track from her upcoming second album due out on March 12th. The new number – which is turbo-charged by a pulsating drum beat and distinctive new wave synthesizer sound – is the third song Davies’ has teased from the inbound LP, following on from Show Your Face and Unravel.
Like those two tracks, The Art of Losing adopts a sombre and uncompromising lyrical tone. Quoted in the accompanying lyric video, Davies says “This song is the centre of the album thematically speaking. Every idea about interrogating loss and what we learn or gain from it is funnelled through it. In a way it’s an upbeat reworking of the Nietzschean themes I explored on my debut – “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – but here, I guess, I’m arriving at a refutation of that myth, which I think is pretty pointless when you’re trying to rationalise grief. I think it’s something that we can all relate to in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.”
The Anchoress has cited the Manic Street Preachers gothic masterpiece The Holy Bible as a key thematic influence on the new record. In an interview with NME this week, Davies spoke about the undiminished visceral, emotional power of the 1994 classic – the Blackwood icons’ last outing as a fourpiece before the tragic disappearance of Richey Edwards – which memorably delved into some of the darkest recesses of human history and modern life.
She said “A lot of people think of that as a really dark and challenging listen, but for me, it was always a record that I would return to as something which could help let out any difficult things I was going through. There’s actually something really joyous about listening to dark records. The challenge, in taking on a subject that naturally lends itself to downtempo, introspective ballads, was forcing myself to do something much more experimental, musically.”
The Art of Losing (the LP)’s Manic Street Preachers connections don’t end there, either. The new album was mixed by long-time Manics’ stablemate Dave Eringa, and incorporates vocal and guitar contributions from the band’s multi-talented frontman James Dean Bradfield. The Anchoress – who has previously toured with the Gwent trio and performed a duet with Bradfield on their 2018 track Dylan & Caitlin – said that the presence of a rock legend had given her an extra incentive to creative something special. She told NME: “There’s nothing like that to egg you on in terms of doing your best work when you know that you’ve got a voice like James Dean Bradfield’s that’s going to be appearing on it.”
Davies – who first burst onto the scene with her Welsh Music Prize-nominated 2016 debut Confessions Of A Romance Novelist – was also busy in action during 2020, scoring a UK number #14 album with Suede guitarist Bernard Butler on their collaborative album In Memory of My Feelings. While acknowledging the pride she and Butler have in the record – which she appeared on as Catherine Anne Davies rather than her stage name – the Glynneath product said that she was excited to get back to work on solo projects.
In a recent interview with Music Radar, she said: “By its very nature ‘The Memory Of My Feelings’ is such a different record from an Anchoress record, because when you come in together and it’s two people that have got different skill sets, even if they massively overlap, you’ve got to make space for each other. So that necessitated me kind of giving up a lot of control that I would normally have to have.“
