The Musical Box
THE ANCHORESS
New spins…
Art-pop chameleon Catherine Anne Davies hits the (wuthering) heights on luminous, literary second album. Existential torment has never sounded so alluring…
Words: Chris Roberts Illustration: Leona Beth
Edited by Dave Everley prog.reviews@futurenet.com
I
ntense, insistent and often inspired, the second album from The Anchoress shows her, on its cover, literally devouring pages and pages of books. Inside, it’s generously strewn with epigrammatic quotes, from F Scott Fitzgerald (“Nothing any good isn’t hard”) to Fernando Pessoa (“I have wanted, like sounds, to live by things and not be theirs”) to Joan Didion (“There comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead”). As you may have gleaned, this isn’t a glib, throwaway party pop record.