Using music as a guide, as a beacon, is always useful. Whether it’s a new reference or something you look for – or find – years later, the suggestion of having something to hold on to is strong. This is about Anna B Savage. The Londoner has an unusual talent for evoking a whole host of good and demonic things that have existed in folk and pop-indie-rock over the last thirty years. It’s worth not dwelling on these references and getting straight to the point: you can easily find a PJ Harvey here.
But the world has changed and no longer needs a PJ Harvey. The world has changed and when comparisons are made with the greats, there’s a tendency to think it’s the same. It’s not. In the early years of her career – long before her first album – Anna B Savage carried her music with the irreverence of the moment, without knowing quite where to place it or if she really wanted to locate it at a specific point. Then came the albums, “A Common Turn” (2021) and “In|Flux” (2023), both on City Slang, which here and there recalled the irreverence of Weyes Blood and with it – the irreverence – the same kind of demons. 2025 and there is a new album, which is an escape to a place where we can stop looking for those references. Perhaps to look for others, or to feel Anna B Savage as something whole, ready to fly, looking for another path. The new songs are a love letter to Ireland, not to the country, but to the folk imagery that contaminates so much art/culture. A love letter that is written with the fluency of folk and epic love songs – forever really is forever – that seek out landscapes that are suitable for romance. And in these landscapes, which can be heard in Savage’s instruments and voice, stories and moments flow so that images can be fixed in these places. Images to create those references that we’ve lost with this new Anna B Savage. Without PJ Harvey or Weyes Blood, we’re left with Anna B Savage. She’s the one we meet in 2025, finding herself, being her own beacon. AS
