This year came from darkness and into… more darkness. But when you see artists using their craft to challenge stigma, like UK musician Anna B Savage whose vinyl comes with eco-friendly vibrators, there is a 2021 we can live for. Today Savage releases “Baby Grand,” both the track off upcoming album Common Turn (1/29) and the name of a film she’s working on with Jim Talbot, her “first love.” The song ventures into their past in remembrance of “a night taut with unexpressed emotions, vulnerability, and miscommunication,” heavy themes the full album reckons with. Ahead of its release, we talked about how the album is crafted by self-pleasure, introspection, and bird talk.
Courage defines Savage’s music and entire being. When she performed the song “Corncrakes” for her mother for the first time, her mother said it was “exposing.” Her reply, “Mom, that’s my most lyrically opaque song. You think that’s exposing, sorry about the rest of it!” In describing the five year period that led to this release, she shares, “I lost my sense of self because of this relationship I was in. When I came out of it, I needed to try to write music. I was building myself up from nothing thinking I’ll never write anything good.” In Common Turn there is only good and beauty in her honest words, wrenching sound, and impassioned demeanor.
Selling a vibrator alongside your vinyl tells all. Savage opens up about her history with self-doubt while simultaneously embracing sex positivity. This is a sentiment that we need to keep reminding ourselves is OKAY and NORMAL and ALLOWED. “I love sex toys,” she says. “I love making stuff. I wondered if we could get some lyrics or logo put on them and my label managed. Maybe it will set a trend.” Anna proves there’s absolutely no shame in the sex toy game. While studying abroad at university in Dublin, she called her mom one day and warned, “I’m sorry to do this to you,” directing her mom to her toy drawer. “I want that one and that one and that one and that one!” The songs reflect the tension between the mental and physical self and how we intellectualize feelings, themes Savage is well versed in. “This whole album is about questioning, exploration and trying really fucking hard. Hopefully a vibrator is a good companion for most of these things….”
“To sum it up in two words: wank more.”
Being open about wanking is different than being emotionally open. In this album, Savage is open on both fronts in songs that are relatable and deeply personal. In “Corncrakes,” for example, Savage sings “I don’t know what’s even real / I don’t feel things as keenly as I used to.” Her unwavering voice repeats this line and the instruments pause. The fullness of her deep voice stands its ground against a silent background, taking up rightful space. Re-joined with instruments, the line becomes a lulling mantra that feels so eerily poignant, leading into our therapy-like conversation. I asked Savage, “If you were to name the feelings associated with this song or album, what would those words be?” After a stretched pause in thought, she says, “For ‘Corncrakes’ it’s… uncertainty and desire. For ‘Common Tern,’ I guess hurt.”
Recording Common Turn wrapped up in August 2019, and the space between then and now has offered a period of reflection. “I didn’t realize at the time I was necessarily writing about feeling things emotionally versus intellectually,” she muses. “That has been so separate for me for such a long time. It’s that kind of understanding of the child part of you, rather than the intellectualized part of you. Which is exactly what I’m still trying to do. Come on, emotions! Not come on, I’ve got way too many.”
Savage’s body is a part of storytelling too. Just watch her live performance of “A Common Tern.” Unsurprisingly, Savage says she is quite a physical person. “I’ve understood that people think it’s affected. If I saw someone pulling the faces onstage…” she trails off. In the song’s official video she writhes while singing, “We watched the common terns flying in and stop dead / suspended, and hung by a thread.”
Vulnerability is linked with Savage’s ability to perform like this live. She essentially imitates a Common Tern as she performs, twisting and turning. She’s created this double entendre and shares the allegorical bird background:
“When terns hunt they don’t even flap their wings, they’re not a bird of prey. They look like they’ve been strung up. That’s magic. There’s something to do with the constriction and the release. Especially with common terns it does feel like you’re seeing something that looks free but it’s completely trapped because it’s just dangling from nothing. That is something I’ve realized more getting further away from the song. The symbolism of the bird as being able to leave and fly off. It’s a suspension and release.”
Much of her aviary knowledge comes from the BBC podcast Tweet of the Day and Helen MacDonald’s book H is for Hawk in which the protagonist funnels her grief from her father’s passing through raising a Hawk. Savage recalls her firsthand experience with a bird, when a one flew into her window once and knocked itself out. She held it in her hand thinking, ‘This is unbelievable and so sad because it has died. Then it woke up and flew into my face.”
This pivot of emotions, from seeing a bird’s revival, working with your first love, to self-flagellation, all allowed Savage to realize this album. It’s important that womxn musicians are empowered to explore negative self-talk and positive self-pleasure; it impacts our culture in ways that challenge the status quo. And the quo’s gotta be challenged.
Watch the video for “Baby Grand” below, keep an eye out for the release of Common Turn on 1/29, and don’t miss Savage perform virtually on 1/26 at 4pm at Baby’s All Right – support her and tune in to see her “pulling lots of weird faces” as her voice mesmerizes us in sound and story.