The Anchoress

As We Once Were is the third studio album from twice Welsh Music Prize nominated artist and producer The Anchoress (aka Catherine Anne Davies), and the long-awaited follow-up to the UK Top 40 album The Art Of Losing, which received wall-to-wall critical plaudits upon its release and scooped up a raft of Album of The Year nods from The Sunday Times, to Prog, to the Mail on Sunday. With Sir Elton John naming it “one of my favourite records of the year” and Caitlin Moran calling it “the inadvertent, beautiful and truthful soundtrack to this moment”, it went on to sell over 10,000 physical copies via the power of word of mouth. Davies created the new album at Black Lodge Studios, while being given access to Pete Townshend’s collection of vintage analogue synthesisers to produce an epic 14-track widescreen exploration of the nature of time and transformation. Against the backdrop of the birth of her first child and the discovery of her grandmother’s voice on a long lost cassette tape, Davies found herself asking the question: “What can we build out of the past? Are we destined to be held down by it? Can we ever return to these past versions of ourselves? Featuring an all-star cast of guest vocalist, including vocals from Mercury Music Prize nominees Hannah Peel and Welsh-Cornish musician Gwenno, long-time collaborator James Dean Bradfield from Manic Street Preachers also contributes vocals and electric guitar, and Eaves Wilder (Secretly Canadian) duets on ‘Damsels’.