Anna B Savage: "Μost songs are about human connection and relationships, in myriad forms"

A chat with musician Anna B Savage before her live performance at Temple on January 13

Από τον Μάνο Κορνηλάκη - Ορφανουδάκη, 09/01/2024 @ 15:41

As the reviews for 2023 come to a close, Anna B Savage is emerging as one of the highlights of the past year, both on a personal and general level. On her latest album, "in|Flux", we met an artist who, in addition to having a charming voice that pierces you with both her tone and depth, is also a music composer of particular breadth and lyrical ingenuity. Speaking about her music, Anna B Savage reveals that every song written about others is also a song about us. Her sober, measured, and insightful discourse shows the quality of an artist who strives on the one hand to be honest about her art, but at the same time is very down to earth instead, keeping her eyes and mind open to what is happening in the society around her. On Saturday 13 January, Anna B Savage will be making her maiden performance in our country, so we took the opportunity to have a few words with her.

Hello Anna! I am Manos, and I would like to thank you on behalf of Rocking.gr for taking the time to have this conversation with me. Before we begin, perhaps you would like to introduce yourself to our readers?

Sure - hello! I’m Anna, a singer-songwriter from London, England. I’ve released two albums and "in|Flux" is the newer one.

It was probably my most listened to album of the year! Congratulations for a truly magnificent work. However, I am not going to rant about the things I loved about it, I'd rather hear you talk about it. What's the story behind its creation?

Well that’s very nice - thank you for listening. The story behind "in|Flux" is unsurprisingly two fold. On one side I wanted to create an album that allowed complexities, allowed nuance and hypocrisies. I was feeling particularly stuck in social media land where you’re not allowed to have nuance or multiplicities and you’re expected to just keep creating one thing for ever and ever and ever, and frankly I’m not interested in that. On the other side I wanted to make an album that was more representative of me when I was making the record. I’d had "A Common Turn" recorded for a long while before it was released so it felt good to write something more up-to-date.

As you’ve said, you have released two LP’s so far, "A Common Turn" and "in|Flux", which share a similar subject matter, personal experiences of romantic relations. What makes personal affairs so attractive as a theme to write music for?

I guess that’s what most of the songs out there are about, in one way or another, isn’t it. Human connection and relationships, in myriad forms. Or at least, that’s what my brain tells me most stuff is about. Trying, failing to connect with others or yourself. That being said, it’s also the only thing I feel truly qualified to write about. Myself.

What I found particularly beautiful with "in|Flux" was its narrative structure. Not only on the lyrics, but also the way the music evolves from track to track, it really takes you to a journey, going through various phases, moods and climaxes. How easy or difficult was to construct it this way? First of all, was it intentional?

Ah thank you so much. It’s funny because all the songs were written over a long stretched out period, though some came in a short burst of about two weeks, but I really felt like though they were written sometimes a year apart, the narrative arc that we wanted to construct felt very natural, and felt like it was not a difficult puzzle to piece together at all. I love the idea of an album as a journey - really I learnt this making my first album where my producer William Doyle and I really sat down and discussed all the different journeys we could take people on with the tracklisting, trying out many many different orders. With this record, Mike Lindsay (my producer) and I found it happened quite naturally - the track listing felt pretty simple.

Your lyrics, though very personal and vulnerable, are also very poetic, filled with images and symbolism, or interesting references to nature. Would you like to walk us through your writing process? Do you start with a metaphor, or do you have to search for the perfect one?

Thank you again - you’re very nice. I was lucky enough to do a creative writing masters where I wrote poetry for a whole year. That has influenced me entirely with my writing. I am constantly jotting down little moments, things I see, or hear, and knowing that once they’re down when I’m writing later on I can refer back to this note and find something that might fit. I generally am very inspired by the natural world, increasingly so as I get older and realize what a vast affect it has on my mental health. As for finding the perfect metaphor, again these sometimes were things I heard about many years ago, or wrote down, or noticed, and then later on I pieced it all together while going through my notes. Really for me writing lyrics is a puzzle or an excavation, rather than a blank page. I make it that way because I find writing from nothing far too overwhelming.

Trying to find credits for your latest album, I see that you are not only the main composer/lyricist and of course the (stellar) singer, but you also play many instruments on it. How many of the things we hear on the album are being performed by you?

I do indeed! I would say I played basically everything except for drums and bass (though Mike may need to correct me on that). Perhaps Mike did a few synth parts. In all honesty I can’t quite remember. It was all just a hell of a lot of fun and Mike and I running around trying different things playing different instruments. But aside from Ben coming in to play drums for a couple of days, it was just us.

Your single "The Ghost" has been included in the compilation "Music Against Misogyny". How has this anti-patriarchal stance influenced your work as a musician?

Oh as a musician! That’s hard. It’s affected my life hugely, though I will point out that as a white, able bodied, middle class cis woman I’ve realized over the last few years that my difficulties being a woman in society - though legit - are not the biggest things we need to address, culturally or societally. As a musician though, in the kind of indie/alternative world that I inhabit, the ratio of men to women is astoundingly bad. But I want to point out that it is significantly worse in terms of representation for people of colour or gender non-conforming people or disabled people. I think especially with touring, it is such a specific lifestyle and has basically catered only to straight white cis men forever that it can be a fairly overwhelming space for anyone else.

You have toured with two other amazing artists, Jehnny Hval and Father John Misty, while you have also collaborated with Orbital for their single "Home", as well as with Tony Njoku and Son Lux - among others, I suspect. What did all these collaborations leave you with?

A deep love of people, collaboration and companionship, and a deep reverence for other people’s crafts.