The December release from Bowers & Wilkins Society of Sound comes from singer, songwriter, producer and storyteller Catherine Anne Davies, otherwise known as The Anchoress.
photo credit: Frances Main
Born in Wales, her parents took her to live in Australia at the tender age of 10 weeks old – the very moment she was old enough to fly. By the age of four she was back in Buckinghamshire, in a house that rang to the sounds of The Carpenters, The Beatles and Nilsson.
One band above all convinced her that it was possible to be fiercely intelligent, glamorously literary and, of course, Welsh: Manic Street Preachers. “Being a precocious, annoying, council estate girl who thought better of herself, I would literally write down every book and author that they had referenced in their old interviews,” she says. “Then I’d go to the library and order Andrea Dworkin’s ‘Mercy’ or Brett Easton Ellis’ ‘American Psycho’. The Manics changed my whole world.”
When it came time to record her debut album, The Anchoress went into Hugh Padgham’s studio in Acton along with her co-producer Paul Draper, and expected to finish it in five weekends. That was three-and-a-half years ago.
“The record felt like it didn’t want to be finished,” she says.
Confessions Of A Romance Novelist is a record that has been deliberated on. It is richer for the time it has taken, and that fact lends weight and meaning to every near-catastrophe that led here. Every trip and fall, even the literal ones, were obstacles for our protagonist to hurdle. Now they’re stories to tell and you can hear them this month on Society of Sound.
Read more and download the album