Photo Credit Maisie Cousins
Anna Calvi shares two new videos - a film for her current single "Hunter" and a performance video for a brand new track, "As A Man" - both taken from her much anticipated album, Hunter, due for release today, August 31st, 2018, via Domino. Both were directed by the Berlin-based filmmaker and photographer, Matt Lambert, much of whose work explores queer love and intimacy.
In the track "Hunter", Calvi celebrates the transcendent aspects of pleasure and finding a community and home in queer spaces. According to Calvi, it is about "exploring a more subversive sexuality, which goes further than what is expected of a woman in our patriarchal heteronormative society." The film for "Hunter", which was premiered via Dazed, was a chance to follow an ongoing theme of creating honest and authentic portrayals of intimacy. Lambert said the following: "The ritual of self-love and body-exploration for many queer individuals is the first step toward feeling confident intimate moments with others".
About the track "As A Man", Calvi said the following: "If a woman wants to be powerful she's expected to exhibit 'male' traits. The woman in the song is trying to understand a man by imagining becoming him, but as it progresses she asks the man to become more like her instead. There's been a lot of encouragement for women to become more like men if they want to get their voices heard, or be powerful. But there hasn't been enough effort to get men to become more like women. Men are brought up believing that to be feminine is to be weak. If there is to be equality, both sexes need to be able to move to the middle of the spectrum. This song is about finding freedom in the non-binary world."
Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman) at Konk Studios in London with some further production in LA, Hunter was recorded with Anna's band - Mally Harpaz on various instruments and Alex Thomas on drums - with the addition of Adrian Utley from Portishead on keys and Martyn Casey from The Bad Seeds on bass. It has a new rawness, a primal energy into which Calvi pushes the limits of her guitar and voice beyond anything she's recorded before.
