Anna B Savage at Night & Day

Following on from her critically acclaimed records A Common Turn and in|FLUX, Anna B Savage will soon release her anticipated third record, You and I are Earth, followed by a UK tour.

The London-born singer-songwriter’s songs are stark, skeletal paintings of moods and reflection, using a palette of mainly voice and guitar, with gentle electronics here and there. Most prominent is her trembling, often whisper-pitch voice, which Rolling Stone labelled “unforgettable”.

Her last album, in|FLUX, was a study in tenderness, as intimate as a therapy session, ruminating on the complexities and variables of humanity, the pain or pleasure of love, loss and earthly connection. That album won Savage popular and critical acclaim around the world, and support tours with everyone from St Vincent to Father John Misty, before she hunkered down for album number three, billed as “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.”

Savage’s connection to Ireland goes back over a decade to when she studied a poetry Masters in Manchester, where both her teachers were Irish, “and I totally fell in love with Seamus Heaney” she recalls. “Then in 2020 I did a Masters in Music (in Dublin) and was reading essays about sean-nós singing, watching Cartoon Saloon stuff, reading about Irish mythology – I wanted to educate myself”. Since then Anna has found a new home in Country Donegal, a place that helped inspire You and I are Earth.

The full album drops on 24 January, but we’ve already heard a couple of singles, both of them delicate, gently radiant songs that transport differently from Savage’s earlier work, being swept along by an abiding sense of calm. ‘Lighthouse’ acts is a hopeful reflection of ancestry, solitude, and companionship. Savage describes it as “a gentle love song about how I presumed I would end up alone, but found someone who makes me feel held, safe and still a sort of (if you’ll forgive me) independent ship in the night.”

Featuring Irish singer Anna Mieke, ‘Agnes’ bring something more earthy and whimsical. Turning on tropes of duality and transformation, it mirrors an unsettling experience that Savage had through meditation, which ultimately ended in a beautiful feeling of connection with the earth. As one of many lines in a love letter to the Emerald Isle, it also draws inspiration from Irish folklore, and its this sense of otherworldliness – in both the lyrics and the music – that really makes the song shine.

“When I was writing the first record, it felt difficult. I wanted to make sense of something I didn’t really understand. Then with the second record I had done some therapy, and was getting to grips with myself, but my old self was still pulling me back a bit, but with this one it was quite different”.

You can feel Savage’s newfound sense of ease with herself within these two songs, which feel totally natural, not reaching or yearning for anything beyond what is already within her grasp. And what she has within her grasp is quite magical.

We can’t wait to hear the new record in full, and to catch Anna B Savage in the intimate confines of Night & Day in February.