Anna B Savage - A Common Turn Vinyl Record

London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage makes question-mark-music, captivating and powerful, navigating various recurring themes including female sexuality, self-doubt ... and birds. Often questioning the validity of her own thoughts and feelings, her songs are heavy with unanswered queries. Is this even real? Do we have what I think we have? How did I get to this point? Is anyone listening? Or the record's opening and most potent question: "Do I understand this?" Yet these questions are buoyed by her ability to conjure melodies and lyrics so devastatingly candid, vulnerable and honest, that somehow still manage to be bewitchingly charming, utterly modern and often funny.

"For me, 'a common turn' is those moments of decision where you think ‘I'm not taking this anymore, whether it's the way someone else is treating you or the what you're treating yourself," Savage explains. In the five years between her first release and A Common Turn, Savage ended a bad relationship, took up odd jobs, moved across the world twice, got herself a lot of therapy and eventually built herself from the ground up again. The album is littered with personal and cultural references (Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Spice Girls, female pleasure, mental health, and a ceramic owl mug by Scottish alt-rock legend Edwyn Collins, among others), all of which are now sewn into her music like talismans.

Savage got in touch with William Doyle (FKA East India Youth - 2014 Mercury Prize nominee' having seen his social media post asking artists to contact him if they wanted to experiment together. From their first meeting, William provided ambitious yet elegant production to the demos Anna brought him, and ultimately gave a definitive shape to the record she had at one point deemed officially impossible to finish. Theirs is a blending of earth and industry, of human feeling and mechanized deconstruction of expectations and barriers. As a pair, they were able to make a record that is, in Savage's words, "about learning, adapting, growing, being earnest and trying really fucking hard."

Savage's music is deeply vulnerable, without being submissive. The subject matter could weigh these songs down, but instead they soar as she lays claim to her own fragility. There's an intoxicating catharsis woven through the album and the stories she tells are of taking up space, finding connections, and owning the power in not knowing all the answers. Hers are songs for anyone who thinks hard, feels deeply, and asks big questions.

1. A Steady Warmth
2. Corncrakes
3. Dead Pursuits
4. BedStuy
5. Baby Grand
6. Two
7. A Common Tern
8. Chelsea Hotel #3
9. Hotel
10. One