To accept the ability of Anna Calvi's voice, it helps to accept to her awning of Leonard Cohen's Joan of Arc. It's an instrumental.
"I aloof thought, so abounding bodies accept interpreted him as singers; there doesn't charge to be any more," the British accompanist told The Montreal Gazette in May, a few hours afore authoritative her Canadian admission in Toronto. "I acquainted like the way I could accord is to charm this admirable atmosphere that he tells in the news aloof through music."
Calvi's full-throated vibrato can annals on the Richter scale; her buzz can be so finespun, it's almost there. She has a acclimatized acquaintance of back to use either - or neither: her self-titled admission opens with an active (Rider to the Sea) that typifies Calvi's accurate arrangements, her ability of astriction and release, and her acceptance the appropriate addendum can say added than the appropriate words: "Listening to music is absolutely like hypnosis, really. It's about actuality taken to addition place, and actuality absent in the amplitude of a song. I do like that idea, and so I absolutely appetite the music to acquaint the news as abundant as the lyrics."
A desire in line with Brian Eno's esthetic, which may be one reason he became an early champion of Calvi. Further support came from Nick Cave, who brought her on tour with his libidinous scuzz-rock quartet Grinderman last year. The latest endorsement came last week: a nomination for Britain's Mercury Prize, the prestigious artistic-merit award upon which Canada's Polaris Music Prize was modelled.
Accolades and honours weren't a consideration when Calvi was preparing her debut; neither was the most basic level of success "I was making a lot of it before I was signed, and I had no idea if anyone would like it, or if anyone would ever hear it. But I was still putting everything that I had into it. That's a lot to give without knowing if you're going to get anything back, and sometimes that's a bit scary.
"But you know, I don't think art should be easy. It should be a struggle. It's part of what makes it mean so much. You've really been through something to get out with this piece of work."
Calvi assembled the mosaic of her album slowly, "like with painting - you get the strong main colours, and then you go in and you do the small work. That small work I like to take my time with." The finished whole is both minimalist and carefully detailed, featuring unsettling silences as well as subliminal washes of sound and backing vocals that start to coalesce after repeated listens. There are elements of vintage chanson (No More Words), a steely touch of Patti Smith (Desire) and a peppering of flamenco. That might sound all over the place, but Calvi stitched her lifetime of influences into a deliberate vision.
Everything in Calvi's songs and presentation is carefully developed, from her flamenco-inspired stage outfits ("I wanted to wear clothes that expressed the passion in the music") to her strength-through-silence charisma in concert ("It's kind of like anti-performance, but it ends up being a more dramatic performance because of it") to the mav-erick guitar/harmonium/drums core of her band to her vocals ("I'm actually a soprano, but I sing much lower"). The latter is particularly astonishing - not just because Calvi's speaking voice blends into the blur of passing traffic, but because she began singing only five years ago.
"For years and years, I was thinking it must be so amazing to express yourself in such a way - using your essence, really, because your voice is your essence. . But I don't fit into the mould of what I thought a singer should be. I have a quiet speaking voice, and I suppose I'm reasonably reserved with people I don't know. My idea of a singer was so opposite of that: someone who wants to be the centre of attention, who's got a really loud voice."
While transforming herself into a vocalist, she discovered that she "felt more passionate when singing lower" - and if there's a single motivating force in her art, it's passion. The word crops up repeatedly when discussing Calvi's songs and inspirations; despite her perfectionist streak, one gets the feeling she doesn't have time for music that's more studied than emotional.