QR music review: anna calvi demands to be heard
Five years on from the critically acclaimed One Breathe, the announcement of Anna Calvi’s fifth studio album Hunter felt long overdue. Taking time to create a considered, candid conversation around gender and sexuality and what it means to exist somewhere between the two binary extremes, its arrival proved to be perfectly timed. Brimming with emphatic, drawn out cries of relief, Calvi’s five-year absence left her brewing 'til the broil.
Though always confident and powerful, Hunter sees Calvi at her most bold and unapologetic. As she toys with gender and sexuality throughout the album, these become tools for exploration and self-expression rather than compartments to be contained within. On ‘Alpha’, light, sensual breaths of “I’m an a-a-alpha” harness a primal energy, with Calvi pushing against what’s expected, bending and breaking the restraints imposed by society. She tells her own story, putting herself at the centre as both powerful and vulnerable, every lyric deeply necessary, truthful, and felt. Subverting the expectations of the hunter and the hunted, the artist becomes both.
On Hunter’s first offering, ‘Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy’ Calvi makes a playful but nevertheless serious statement, maintaining a sense of elation and freedom on what’s ultimately a celebration of diversity and non-conformity. The track is a reminder that, while masculine traits are to a degree accepted and encouraged within women, a disservice is being done, still, to femininity within men. And Calvi is here to make sure we let it flourish. Pushing the boundaries of her lyrical, musical and vocal inclination, she links body to sound in an intrinsic, primal way, all the while eschewing the notion that ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ should be uttered in relation to any of it. Why should she (or anyone) have to choose, why not applaud both?
Both live and on the record, Calvi’s affinity to classical music and her wide-reaching operatic vocals are put to spectacular use. Instrumentally building a fervour that pushes almost to the point of panicked eruption, always released at the precise moment of catharsis. Her playing is instinctual, driven by feeling and intuition, as though perfectly improvised – the epitome of creative and expressive freedom. A masterful handling of live-wire, art-rock guitar with an unrelenting, visceral energy, Hunter makes itself clear. Calvi has something to say, and demands to be heard.
By Addison Paterson