Welsh-born multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and author Catherine Anne Davies – otherwise known as the Anchoress – isn’t your normal pop star. A published writer with a PhD in literature and queer theory from University College London, she creates terrifyingly intense songs that often document heartbreaking pain. Tragically, much of this pain is told from personal experience, the last few years having brought the death of her father, a cancer diagnosis and treatment, and the loss of several pregnancies.

Her debut album Confessions Of A Romance Novelist landed in 2016, and took critics and fans by storm. It won HMV’s Welsh Album of the Year Award, was nominated for the Welsh Music Prize, saw the Anchoress nominated for Best Newcomer at the PROG awards, and was named amongst the Guardian critics’ Albums of the Year. Her new record, The Art Of Losing, is a daunting prospect then: a no-doubt deeply cathartic collection of the Anchoress’s grief that is under pressure to meet the heights of its supremely accomplished predecessor.

After an instrumental opening, the album’s opening lyric is telling. “Ouch, this is going to hurt,” the Anchoress sings in her rich, brooding vocals as the opening notes of Let It Hurt fade away. It’s a chilling and fitting start. The Exchange – featuring Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield, one of several collaborations between the band and the Anchoress over the last few years – then follows, with its tale of a bitter, dysfunctional relationship.

Unravel emerges from an intro built from delicate strings into a monster of synths and pounding drums, all tied together by the Anchoress’s sublime vocal (“But if you don’t want me then I don’t want me / I waste too much of my time”), while 5AM is genuinely heartbreaking, a gentle piano and soft strings all that illuminate a harrowing account of a deeply personal and painful experience. The album’s title track fuses more powerful synths and drums as the Anchoress asks: “was there some purpose to losing my mind?’. 

A lot of The Art Of Losing is far from easy listening, despite it’s glorious sounds. It’s clearly a deeply personal record and, as much as anything, an attempt to answer that question. As such requires a real investment to fully appreciate and understand, but it’s absolutely worth the effort because it’s also a stunning, beautiful, and heartbreaking collection.

The Art Of Losing tracklist:

1. Moon Rise (prelude)
2. Let It Hurt
3. The Exchange
4. Show Your Face
5. The Art Of Losing
6. All Farewells Should Be Sudden
7. All Shall Be Well
8. Unravel
9. Paris
10. 5AM
11. The Heart Is A Lonesome Hunter
12. My Confessor
13. With The Boys
14. Moon (An End)

Watch the official video for The Exchange here. 

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.