Welsh multi-instrumentalist and producer The Anchoress, aka Dr Catherine Anne Davies, has released ‘As We Once Were’ as a standalone single, the title track from her acclaimed third album, and announced a headline show at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, part of the Southbank Centre.
The single was inspired by what Davies calls the “Proustian rush of adolescent memory”: “driving past houses and streets that hold incredibly evocative memories for me of my teenage years and conjures that intoxicating feeling of being drawn back into the past,” she said. The nostalgic, synth-laden track was made in part using Pete Townshend’s vintage synthesisers, now housed at his Townshend Studios in West London. Its lyric video, directed by longtime collaborator JJ Eringa, sees Davies immersed in a bath of old cassette tapes, the same material that inspired the record.
As We Once Were, released in August via Last Night From Glasgow, is The Anchoress’s third studio album, following the Welsh Music Prize-nominated The Art of Losing and Confessions of a Romance Novelist. The record has picked up widespread critical acclaim since release and topped the Official Scottish Album Chart, also reaching number 6 on the Official Album Sales Chart and Physical Albums Chart. Davies describes the album as “a conversation across four generations of women,” born out of being given access to Townshend’s synths around the same time as the birth of her first child and discovering her grandmother’s voice on an old cassette tape in her mother’s loft. The record features guest vocalists including Hannah Peel, Gwenno, longtime collaborator James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, and newcomer Eaves Wilder, and was mixed by Dave Eringa and Mikko Gordon and mastered by Jon Astley.
Davies marks the album’s momentum with a run of live dates through 2027, opening at Winters End Festival in Chepstow on 9 April, before Hebden Bridge’s Trades Club and Glasgow’s Cottiers Theatre at the end of that month. The year builds to a headline show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 9 October, with more dates still to be announced.
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