Catherine Anne Davies - Light in the Darkness

Listening to your latest EP, I particularly appreciated the atmosphere, deep, melancholic, almost desperate. It brought to mind a line from Mazzy Star: "Some kind of light into your darkness". What do you think about that?

Yes, I definitely root for the "light in the darkness", although it's really only the songwriting process itself that can be an act of catharsis. I think it's important to draw something more out of yourself than just wallowing in a dark, depressing situation. I think that's what drives me to write some songs in the first place. I think what Proust said about books can easily apply to songs too - he said: "Real books are born not of daylight and casual talk but of darkness and silence".

Your writing is so loaded with everyday emotions, it grows with your music - is that your starting point when writing new songs? Or are they just assembled thoughts?

Songs tend to emerge already structured, guided more by strong emotions than anything else. Where a song doesn't have an autobiographical spark, it comes from a very strong image or metaphor I've stumbled upon somehow (for instance "The Heart Is A Lonesome Hunter"). Occasionally they go through a few mutations: "The Congregation" started out with a simple musical idea - so simple, in fact, that it could have become almost anything - but then a line came out of nowhere, about someone who killed themselves on railway tracks. So the next line (about Virginia Woolf) felt natural. The song, however, ends up somewhere completely different.

You live in London - do you find yourself fighting against the "indie hype", since your music runs quite against the current, or are you comfortable with the space you're able to carve out for yourself?

Luckily, nobody's trying to force me into the role of "the next Pete Doherty" or anything like that, so there's time to develop and move forward without being in the spotlight one minute and dropped the next. There also seems to be a fair number of people working in similar musical territory (I've been labelled "folk noir" and have played various "new folk" nights) without the genre itself feeling oversaturated.

What are you currently listening to? Is there any artist you'd like to work with?

At the moment, Devics, and the latest album by Fiona Apple. I'd work with Tom Waits, I'd love to hear him screaming on one of my songs.

What are your biggest musical wishes?

Did Patrick Wolf ever come to Italy? He's like a male Kate Bush. Jandek, on the other hand, whispers through my walls at night.

Which song would you cover? Something close to your musical taste, or something completely different?

“Confide in me” by Kylie Minogue, with no irony at all, she's a hero from my childhood. So far I've covered Nina Simone (“Wild Is The Wind”), Tracy Chapman (“Baby, Can I Hold You?”), and Nick Drake (“Black Eyed Dog”). I'd decided to record one cover a month this year, but I got stuck on “Fantastic Voyage” by David Bowie, so I thought I'd focus a bit more on my PhD instead...

Have you ever thought of reinterpreting a country song?

“In My Hour of Darkness” by Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. It's one of the earliest country-rock songs, and strangely joyful, unlike its lyrics. I still haven't decided whether to make a very dark version of it, or leave it a bit upbeat.

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