Anna Calvi: a new album is coming featuring Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson and Matt Berninger (The National). Listen to "God's Lonely Man"

Anna Calvi's recording comeback takes the form of an EP built around three heavyweight collaborations: Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson and Matt Berninger of The National. It's titled “Is This All There Is?” and is set for release on March 20.

After the cover of “I See A Darkness” by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, shared with Perfume Genius at the end of last year, Calvi opens this new chapter with “God’s Lonely Man”. On the track, Iggy Pop lends his voice to an abrasive, unsettling inner monologue, a presence that serves a narrative moving between destructive impulse and the need for catharsis. Guitar and drums underpin a stripped-back sound, conceived as a head-on reaction to emotional inertia and despair.

“Is This All There Is?” is the first installment of a trilogy exploring identity as filtered through the experience of falling in love. The creative spark coincides with a decisive personal turning point: motherhood. Calvi describes this change as an event capable of shaking every certainty, opening the door to a transformation that is at once radical and liberating. Hence the question that gives the project its title, meant as a primal inquiry into existence and the possibility of redefining it.

The Ep also features a reworking of “Computer Love” by Kraftwerk, made with Laurie Anderson. The move comes at a stage in which the visual and narrative dimension has become central to the musician's work: from her scores for “Peaky Blinders” to writing an opera with director Robert Wilson. The Ep thus presents itself as a single body of work, conceived as a continuous sonic narrative, closer to a cinematic structure than to a simple collection of songs.

Anna Calvi's return was especially anticipated: it's her first release since scoring the music for the last two seasons of “Peaky Blinders” (BBC), whose soundtrack – marked by her visceral guitar work and trademark feverish atmospheres – was released in full at the start of 2024.

Alongside this, the artist has launched her own Substack, “Carving Silver In Strange Weather,” a space where she shares unreleased tracks, playlists, live recordings and reflections on her artistic obsessions. The first cycle of writings, titled “The Guitar – Depravity and The Divine,” has just wrapped up.

After taking part in the David Lynch tribute organized by the Southbank Centre, Calvi is gearing up for a headline show at London's EartH Theatre: an intimate, already sold-out event where she will perform rarities from her catalogue alongside special guests.

With three albums under her belt – each a theatrical plunge into the territories of desire, unease and identity – Anna Calvi has been shortlisted three times for the Mercury Prize and nominated for a BRIT Award.

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