On her third album, You & i are Earth, London-originating songwriter Anna B Savage once again opts for a change in production collaborator, not willing to rest on the laurels and return to the same well that yielded her sensational previous records. She could hardly have chosen a more steady pair of hands than John ‘Spud’ Murphy, whose work with modern greats like Lankum and black midi speaks for itself, and – as Savage details below – he helped to reel out of her and her collaborators some of the finest and most dynamic music she has yet released.
Moreover, the bigger change for Savage on You & i are Earth is the location – she’s relocated from London to Donegal, Ireland to be with her partner. Rather than feel unsettled, it seems that the new setting has infused her with a whole new wellspring of inspiration – stemming from the surroundings, the culture and the language, which she has immersed herself in.
Savage has been kind enough to give us her own personal reflections on the 10 excellent tracks that make up the new record – giving us valuable insights into the touchstones, the contributing players and the studio moments – all of which makes this already rich record feel all the more profound.
- “Talk To Me”
I wanted to imbue this record with deep a sense of place, that of the coast in Ireland where I live with my partner. So, we used a recording I made on a boat ride near my house. Using such blatant foley was hugely inspired by Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins who do a similar thing at the start of that album. That whole record is so imbued with place, and I was aiming for that with this record.
This song was written at the start of this album writing process, and just before I went in to the studio my partner helped me finish the lyrics in the chorus as I was struggling – after two years of knocking this song around my head – to finish it. The gentleness of the guitar is somewhat offset by the gorgeous cello and violin parts by Kate Ellis and Cormac MacDiarmada respectively.
These strings add in the sense of ever so slight wobbliness which the song – though brimming with love – still has at its core.
- “Lighthouse”
I am so excited about the talents showcased on this album, and on this track in particular they get to shine – there was so much space for everyone to bring their own flavour. There’s Kate Ellis on cello (on this track, transforming her instrument in to calling seagulls), Caimin Gilmore on double bass, Cormac MacDiarmada on violin, Joe Taylor on percussion, and Brian Dillon on the piano.
His piano line in the second half of this song is just gorgeous, and I still get as much stink face from listening to it now as I did when I heart it being recorded (improvised…!) live.
This is a simple love song about the surprise of falling in love, and finding a love that feels so easy and simple, and like a home. I wanted to lean in to this loveliness and simplicity in the arrangement, allowing for lush, backing vocals that are just kind of… nice? Historically I haven’t allowed myself ‘nice’ arrangement ideas, often reaching for interesting or knotty instead. It was nice to lean in to the niceness for this song, and more broadly this album. Yeah? Nice.
- “Donegal”
Having newly moved to Ireland, more specifically Donegal, I was wrestling with an exceptionally varied litany of emotions: hope, homesickness, shame about English colonialism and history, fear, love of a new place. The way this song lilts and builds out of nowhere feels like a representation of this kind of overwhelm.
In the arrangement, Spud and I tracked Joey’s drums first, and even on his last day with us we were still re-tracking and editing what we’d done. Finally we got the percussion to a place that felt like it was holding the track perfectly, and that was the bed from which we built the rest of the arrangement and instrumentation.
- “Big & Wild”
I think of this song as my (falling shy of the mark) attempt at a Parachutes of my own. Super short, almost completely unadorned, one take, slightly wonky and very very exposed in the middle of the album. Spud turned off as many lights as possible and I did a couple of passes at it, struggling to keep the sound of my fingers scratching the strings at their very minimum. Cormac added some little violin shimmers after the fact – and they are as delicate a part as could be accommodated on this song. And that’s it.
- “Mo cheol Thú”
There’s a gorgeous podcast called Poetry Unbound, and in one episode the host Pádraig Ó Tuama explains that in his Irish dialect hailing from (I think) Munster, there’s no direct translation of “I love you”. Instead, it’s “mo cheol thú” which translates as “you are my music’.
This song is a direct response to this piece of knowledge, which is potentially one of the most romantic things ever. For me, it also speaks to the way in which – as I understand it – music is deeply embedded in Irish language and culture. This deep musical knowledge becomes increasingly apparent to me the more time I spend here.
I knew I wanted the middle section of this song to go to a different place – so Spud suggested dropping the guitar part down low, and we started building the bed of clarinets that you hear after the “breathe with me” part. Whenever we were getting someone to play on this song, we would also get them to improvise over this middle section, eventually selecting takes or melodic ideas that fit. But mostly, it’s just those clarinets that carry us through in to an alternate world. I don’t know where they came from (my clarinet playing is exceptionally rusty), but when I first heard the change in to the “breathe with me” section, I cried. As ever, it’s a good indicator to me that I’ve hit something good if I start crying.
- “Incertus”
For me, “Incertus” is the introduction to the following song “I Reach for you in my Sleep”, but when I was first conceiving of the album I did a couple of days working with Brendan Jenkinson and we ended up playing around this little guitar canon, and I really fell in love with it. But as an introduction to the second side of the record, I was keen for it to have a slightly uncanny twist, so Spud and I when we eventually recorded it asked Caimin Gilmore to bow the really, really low D (I think) on his double bass, and we highlighted and rounded out that lower end by asking Cormac and Kate to improvise in the harmonics register over the top of this. I absolutely love this track, and feel like Spud’s guidance in this (and throughout the album) encouraged these songs into spaces that are so much bigger, so multi-faceted and multi-dimensional, especially compared to to what I had originally written.
- “I reach for you in my Sleep”
Another love song – can you imagine – which to me sounds like it exists between Spring and Summer (some day I’ll manage to get an album out in the light part of the year). The sparkling piano over the choruses and the dappled light and the gorgeous string parts that lilt and fall over one another. Again, I allowed myself to lean in to the nice parts, and the stacked tasty harmonies. I relished the opportunity to play a harmonium on this song too, my first time playing that gorgeous instrument. I tried to play with the dynamic range of it too, playing as quietly as I could, which I think was a little baffling to Spud (sorry).
There’s a little wobble in my voice in the last line – as I tried to stifle my tears from arriving. Which, naturally, they did immediately after I finished that take.
- “Agnes (ft. Anna Mieke)”
This song is inspired by Irish folklore, therapy practice, and a tweet. In therapy we had been meditating and visualizing, a practice that is in turns frightening and deeply comforting.
Concurrently, I was reading about Selkies and Faeries, and it was when I read this tweet that I felt the folklore melding with my own personal therapeutic experiences. That moment of potential relief followed by a deep terror, and the act of turning your clothes inside out to release your entrapment from the ‘stray sod’.
This song – or rather Agnes herself – is an embodiment of the fascination and fear, the joy and the reverence I felt in these lessons. At once benevolent and kind “you can come here any time”, and deeply frightening “she’s tucking me [under the ground]… leaving me over here”, I felt like I was trying to learn how to be content holding multiplicities all at once and being okay with it. I struggled to think of people who could be Agnes’s voice, and suddenly I realised Anna Mieke was perfect, I adore her music, and her vocals/lyrics are in turns delicate and ethereal, powerful and a little uncanny. I am so grateful to her for taking on this wild song and making Agnes come to life.
- “You & i are Earth”
We tackled this song on day 1 of our recording schedule. Without any real plan or ideas from my end, Spud expertly guided me towards the tashigoto and I think embarrassingly I was poo pooing it originally as we built up each individual note. When Spud finally aligned them and we listened back, I realised that he was a genius and that I should trust him entirely.
Similar to the middle portion of “Mo Cheol Thú”, Spud and I decided that there needed to be a moment where we went in to a slightly different world. We decided that the guitar would drop out completely in that last chorus, and in it’s place we’re left with Kate’s devastating cello arpeggios, and Joey doing the most gorgeous almost timpani rolls on his drum kit, alongside clarinet padding chords from me. To me this section feels almost weightless, like you’ve walked off the edge of a cliff and instead of falling you fly.
- “The rest of our Lives”
A slightly different from normal chorus here, with basically just one line and then loads of harmonies coming in at different times – I’ve been obsessed with this (consciously obsessed at least!) since the “away”s in Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky” and feel like it’s such a wonderful way to build a palette of voices with not equal weighting but importance.
I think it also felt important in this song to just let the music breathe, not have me lyricising all over the top of it as I often do, just by nature of writing with just voice and guitar. Cormac as ever created such gorgeous patterns and rhythms which perfectly accentuate and play with the guitar line. I just wanted everyone who listened to this to just have a nice time. I hope the album is similar. Just… pretty lovely really.
You & i are Earth is out now via City Slang – stream or buy it here. You can follow Anna B Savage on Facebook and Instagram.
