Hunter
Hunter, the third long player from the BRIT award and double Mercury Music Prize-nominated Anna Calvi, will be released on 31st August 2018 via Domino. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman) at Konk Studios in London with some further production in LA, the album was recorded with Anna's band - Mally Harpaz on various instruments and Alex Thomas on drums - with the addition of Adrian Utley from Portishead on keys and Martyn Casey from The Bad Seeds on bass. It has a new rawness, a primal energy into which Calvi pushes the limits of her guitar and voice beyond anything she’s recorded before. Hunter is the embodiment of the feeling of truly letting go. For the songwriter and virtuosic guitarist, it was a catharsis, an opportunity to be more truthful than ever. The first new music since 2014’s collaborative release with David Byrne, Strange Weather EP, her self-titled debut album and the 2013 follow-up One Breath, Hunter is a visceral album exploring sexuality and breaking the laws of gender conformity. A queer and a feminist record, it is galvanising in its hunt for freedom. It was important to Calvi that it was as vulnerable as it is strong; as beautiful as it is harsh; as much about the hunted as it is about the hunter. But she’s careful not to characterise any of these traits as “masculine” or “feminine” – the whole point is that one person, of any gender, can be both. The power is in the contrast itself; in the way she oscillates between extremes, sounding freer than ever before. She wanted to express herself while being “free from the story that either gender is given, free from worrying how people would judge me on what I want to do with my body and myself. For me, that’s quite a utopian vision.”
On her first album in five years, the goth-rock guitar virtuoso abandons her typically detached perspective to ruminate on gender, sexuality, and identity with newfound urgency.
No one would call Anna Calvi’s music tame. This is an artist who announced herself in 2011 with the rousing drama of “Desire” and the sweeping, Morricone-inspired vistas of “Love Won’t Be Leaving,” who took the stage in flaming red silk, expressive riffs sparking from her sunburst Telecaster. It was enough to make…
‘Hunter’ finds Anna Calvi rejecting societal norms, her sound less polished than on previous albums
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Anna Calvi took a five-year break after releasing 2013's One Breath, but the intervening time didn't diminish the grand sound she's been cultivating since her debut.
Anna Calvi may be indie rock's most accomplished pleasure seeker. The British songwriter is a bravura singer and a virtuosic guitarist, but...
Anna Calvi is legit. On her 2011 debut she was finding her voice, on its follow she was learning her craft, but on her third album ‘Hunter’
Anna Calvi was inspired by recent conversations around gender and sexuality to make an album 'Hunter' that represents a true release.
Hunter is a bold and defiant statement on postgenderism through music that’s alternately elegant and raw.
Rock and roll, at its best and most primitive, is designed to grab you by the crotch before seeping into your brain.
Anna Calvi broadens her own horizons to give listeners a mix of class and dirt in our review of her stunning new record 'Hunter'
Compelling collection of heart-stopping songs offers new artistic depths to wallow in
This album starts on a slightly odd footing, thanks to the opener “As a Man” having phrases that sound by turns a lot like Propellorheads and Shirley Bassey's “History Repeating” and Grace Jones's cover of Flash And The Pan's “Walking in the Rain”. Not that those are bad records – both are still highly playable – and it certainly sets a tone of arch assurance and cabaret sass. But being reminded so early of such entirely distinctive and out-on-their-own tracks makes it a little hard to triangulate where Calvi is coming from here.