The Anchoress has returned with the synth-led new single ‘I Had a Baby Not A Lobotomy’ along with details of new album ‘As We Once Were’. Check it out below along with our interview with Catherine Anne Davies.
The first album from the Welsh singer-songwriter and Manic Street Preachers collaborator since 2021’s acclaimed ‘The Art Of Losing‘ will arrive this August, and comes preceded by ‘I Had a Baby Not A Lobotomy’ featuring Gwenno – tackling preconceptions of young mothers and “a tongue in cheek litany of all the stupid things people said to me when I had a baby”, as Davies explained.
“So much of this record was born out of the early years of my daughter’s life, and I really wanted to collect together and call out all of the clichés, stereotypes and dumb shit that people say to women who’ve had babies that I had encountered myself,” Davies told NME. “I started a note in my iPhone, just writing down each thing I heard pop out of people’s mouths: from the assumption that I would no longer be touring, to the assertion that I would no doubt ‘mellow out’ and have some kind of personality transplant.
“Quite the contrary: motherhood radicalised me. And I know I’m not alone in this.”
Davies continued: “So many friends have spoken about labouring under the false assumption that we had somehow reached a place of gender equality, until they became mothers and discovered how regressive so many of the systems still are around parental leave, maternity pay, and the practicalities of rearing children when it now takes two full-time wages just to exist.
“When I put it all together, it really felt like a litany of misogyny and lazy bias but it also revealed the utter inanity of most of what we are told or assumed about as a result of choosing to procreate. I’ve spent a lot of time following brilliant campaigners online who are working towards equal flexibility in the workplace and shared parental leave for freelance workers – and no, we are not entitled to it, unlike those who are employed, which still shocks people when they find out.”
Davies explained how each verse of the song centres on a different universe: the music industry, the medical context, and the wider world.
“I hope people receive it as intended – as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the persistent, quiet misogyny of motherhood,” she added. “I wrote it as an anthem for anyone who has ever been written off for daring to procreate. It’s also the starting point for my new podcast, The Milk & The Music, which I’m launching next month: a series of solutions-focused conversations about how the music industry grapples with its motherhood penalty. Because this conversation is so much bigger than one song.”
Check out the rest of our interview with The Anchoress below, where she told us about what to expect from her “star-studded” new record – written as “a conversation across four generations of women” and her “most sonically adventurous” record yet – working with Gwenno and plans to hit the road.
NME: Hello Catherine. How’s life been in the five years since ‘The Art Of Losing’?
The Anchoress: “It doesn’t really feel like I’ve stopped! Apart from releasing ‘Versions’, my album of covers in 2023, finally getting to do two of my own headline tours (with added air filters), working with the Manics, I’ve also been producing and remixing for other artists, which has kept me deeply embedded in the studio in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated.
“And then, of course, there’s the small matter of becoming a mother, which, as this record will attest, has been the most creatively and politically galvanising thing that has ever happened to me. I came back to writing my own material with more to say than ever. The five years felt long in some ways and flew by in others but I think the new work is much better for the time that it took.”
Sonically, what were you reaching for here?
“I wanted it to feel simultaneously furious and euphoric, like the emotional register of realising the joke is on everyone who underestimated you. There’s a lot of space in the production deliberately, because I wanted every word to land. The palette is very much rooted in vintage synths. I was in a synth world somewhere between John Grant and Depeche Mode, with a bit of that Stranger Things technicolour eeriness running through it.
“Having access to Townshend Studios and Pete‘s collection of vintage analogue synthesisers was a huge part of shaping that sound. The ARP 2500 (as used on the Quadrophenia soundtrack) was the cherry on top of the arrangement. I grappled with it for a good hour before I arrived at the sequence you hear over the choruses. It was an almost religious moment, managing to create this sound out of something that looks as complex as a flight controller.”
What can you tell us about your relationship with Gwenno and what she brings to the track?
“Gwenno is just extraordinary, as an artist, as a person, as someone who has quietly and determinedly shown that there is absolutely no reason why any of this has to stop when you become a parent. She gave me so much good, practical advice when I was first trying to navigate touring post-pregnancy. I took my daughter on tour with the Manics two summers ago (including taking her to Glastonbury) and was genuinely nervous about how to manage it all, and Gwenno really set me straight.
“She was an absolute lifesaver. I’ve looked up to her enormously, just watching her get on with it and do an incredible job of proving that it can be done. So when I was making this record, she felt like the only person I wanted on this song. The authenticity of her voice adds something I couldn’t have anticipated and was just perfect for what the track needed.”
How representative is this of the album to come?
“It captures the energy and the refusal to be quiet but I’d also say it’s one of the more overtly combative moments on the record. Think of it as kicking the door open rather than the whole room. But the album as a whole has a much broader emotional range than this first single might suggest. There are a few songs that go to some genuinely dark and tender places. There’s a song I wrote crumpled on the floor that I’m still not sure I’ll ever be able to play live. There’s a queer anthem inspired by the love letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (which features a special guest on vocals and guitar).
“There’s a song bookended by the voice of my grandmother, recorded on a cassette tape my mum found in her loft. Side B of the vinyl in particular goes somewhere quite different sonically, drawing on The Carpenters and those big 1970s studio records my parents played me growing up. So the intent is consistent throughout – this is still very much a record that refuses to look away from difficult things – but the emotional and sonic register shifts enormously across those 14 tracks. It’s the most sonically adventurous thing I’ve made.”
How does the album transform the universe of The Anchoress from ‘The Art Of Losing’?
“‘The Art Of Losing’ was a record about grief and the disorientation of loss – about being unmade by circumstances beyond your control. ‘As We Once Were’ is almost its counterpoint, though I didn’t set out to make it that way. I found myself asking: ‘What can we build out of the past? Are we destined to be held down by it, defined by it?’ That question became the spine of the whole record. It’s about piecing yourself back together: something akin to the Japanese art of kintsugi, the idea that the repair work can make something more valuable than what existed before. The thread running through it is really identity under pressure: who you are when the world decides it knows better than you about what you should be feeling, doing, becoming.
“It’s also, unexpectedly, a conversation across four generations of women – my grandmother, my mother, myself, my daughter. Finding a cassette tape of my grandmother’s voice in my Mum’s loft was one of those moments that just cracked the record wide open. Here was this woman who had lived through so much, witnessed so much change, and was still so radically herself. That discovery sat alongside the birth of my daughter and the access to Townshend Studios and Pete’s vintage synth collection, and those two things colliding – the very old and the unrepeatable – really set the sonic and emotional tone for everything that followed.”
Can we expect any other guests on the album?
“Ssshhh! Apart from Gwenno, I can’t tell you about all that quite yet, but there is quite a star-studded cast of collaborators on there. Some familiar faces and voices, and also a couple of people who might genuinely surprise. I’m very proud of who came to the table and what they brought. To paraphrase Tori Amos, I had a big loan from the ‘girl zone’ and the conversations I got to have in the making of this record were as nourishing as anything that ended up on tape -and quite a lot of it did end up on tape.”
When can we see you on tour?
“I’ll be playing a one-off album launch show at London’s legendary 100 Club – the oldest independent venue in the world – on Saturday August 22, with a parent-friendly early curfew of 10pm to make it more accessible to all. No more worrying about getting the last train home or arranging childcare until midnight.
“I wanted to make it something people could actually come to, whatever their situation – which is why I’m also working with The Ticket Bank to make some tickets available for those on benefits. Beyond that, more dates are coming – and I promise they’ll be planned with the same thinking. Watch this space.”
‘I Had A Baby Not A Lobotomy’ is out now. The Anchoress releases ‘As We Once Were’ on Friday August 7 (pre-order here) before an album launch show at London’s 100 Club on Saturday August 22. Tickets go from sale at 10am on Tuesday April 14 and will be available here.