I’ve been following Anna Calvi since 2018’s Hunter, which, in my opinion, cracked open the earth just enough to let the next wave of art pop rock crawl out blinking into the 2020s. Lyrically, wielding her contralto voice like a weather system, she can conjure PJ Harvey’s ghost, Siouxsie Sioux’s shadow, or a Kate Bush who has been chain-smoking in a lighthouse— and the music is usually poppy, but dark as hell. Oh, and she scored Peaky Blinders Seasons 5 and 6, which is to say she once handed a television show a loaded gun. So yeah, Anna Calvi is not to be fucked with.
This new batch of songs is only a four-song EP, and that’s the worst part — like being handed a door with no house attached. Calvi is the only artist who can ring up Iggy Pop for a guest feature on “God’s Only Man” and somehow leave him standing in the hallway while she takes up all the rooms. The whole EP features Pop, Perfume Genius, Laurie Anderson, and The National’s Matt Berninger — a guestlist that should not cohere, and yet somehow does, the way objects in a dream always make sense until you wake up and try to explain them.
“Computer Love,” is a Kraftwerk cover and just Anderson doing her spoken word thing, a voice like a museum after closing time, while Calvi’s own voice hovers somewhere underneath, wrapped in screaming synths that sound like a fax machine. Sandwiched between the first two tracks, it floats rather than lands. But then the closer arrives — “Is This All There Is,” featuring Matt Berninger’s pained baritone, a voice that sounds like it has been slowly sinking into a leather armchair. The track begins slow, the way a burning cigarette begins slow, all ember and patience — and then detonates into something euphoric and shoegazy. Calvi does it again. A full album, somewhere out there, is hopefully already growing.
