Welsh multi-instrumentalist The Anchoress has released the video for single The Exchange. The track features James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, and has been taken from her upcoming second album The Art of Losing, due out on 12th March 2021.
Today… 10.30am https://t.co/JX6gNWvADG
— The Anchoress (@The_Anchoress) March 9, 2021
The musician, also known as Catherine Anne Davies, said about the track: “I was so lucky that James agreed to lend his vocal to this track. It was written as a duet that explores a toxic dynamic created by those that see people as puppets rather than as human beings. When I first pulled his vocal into the finished track, I had one of those goosebump moments where you pinch yourself that one of your childhood idols is singing a song that I wrote.”
Bradfield commented: “It was an intense experience for me. The direction was clear but it took me a while to zone in on the feel. It inadvertently helped me in how to sing some of the songs on Even In Exile [his 2020 solo album]. I learnt a new way to approach a song with her help.” The video was directed by filmmaker JJ Eringa, and stars actor Genevieve Anderson. The dark and eerie music video features the quote: “He had never regarded other men as anything but puppets of a sort, created to fill up an empty world,” from 19th-century French writer Guy de Maupassant. Discussing the video, The Anchoress mused: “We wanted to make a bit of a homage to The Red Shoes. We follow her fate as she is forced to play piano until her hands bleed, only to be brought back to life time and time again when she collapses with exhaustion.”
The new album has already been named as album of the week from both the Mail on Sunday and The Line of Best Fit. The Telegraph has described it as: “A lyrically bold, musically lush art rock investigation of grief on which she sounds like a cross between torch-singing Chrissie Hynde and David Bowie on a synth-pop death trip.”
Thanks to @TimdeLisle for making The Art of Losing the Mail on Sunday Album of the Week
The only only time I hope to ever be sharing space with Piers Morgan…
Read Tim’s lovely review here: https://t.co/XvE8NTNrX8
The album is out on Friday: https://t.co/lJfbssHUwp pic.twitter.com/obxP0hw94t
— The Anchoress (@The_Anchoress) March 8, 2021
Davies created her stage name, The Anchoress, in 2013. In 2016 she released her debut album 2016’s Confessions of a Romance Novelist, which scooped multiple awards and nominations, including HMV’s Welsh Album of the Year and Best Newcomer at the PROG Awards. She has supported Manic Street Preachers and performed with Simple Minds.
