Anna B Savage is having a banner 2021. Having released one of the year’s best albums, A Common Turn, she isn’t taking a moment to rest. As she prepares for a fall tour, she’s revealed plans for a companion EP (indeed, these songs were originally meant for the album, only to be cut during the shaping of the album’s flow), titled These Dreams, which arrives on September 24. As thunderous and essential as anything she’s yet done, it’s a powerful, if brief, statement.
To kick things off, she’s shared the genuinely epic single that is “Since We Broke Up”. Rather than a tale of a broken heart, it revels in the new found freedom of departing an ailing relationship. Savage expands:
“This song exists in a post break-up liminal space. Where normally there is sadness, reflection and heart ache, I realised that for me this particular space was full of contentment, resilience and small joys. Addressed to the old partner, it allows for free-flowing if sometime tentative speech: actually, I hadn’t been lonely since, I didn’t make the wrong decision, I’m on my own a lot, and I’m loving it. This song explores the melodrama and the mundanity of those days after a break up, where small things can seem hugely altered now that you’re contending with them alone. I found myself for the first time in my life realising that I liked myself and that I was happy in my own company. I wanted this emotional back and forth to come across in the production, and I think the oscillation between the verses and choruses do this perfectly – the tug of war between all the different audible elements, the spaces between pain and joy, codependence and self-sufficiency. I guess it’s the happiest song I’ve ever written.“
Naturally, how you hear it is entirely up to interpretation, and the repeated refrain of, “I hope I never love again,” may be freeing or devastating, depending your state of mind. Whatever the case, it’s a resolute, absolutely supreme first offering.
Check it out below, and look out for These Dreams come September 24th.
