London-based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage has announced her debut album A Common Turn, which is set for release on January 29th via City Slang. Playing on the album title, today Savage is sharing single & video “A Common Tern“.
“A Common Tern” is a song about Savage’s escape from toxicity; first from a relationship, and then with her relationship to herself. The moment Savage decided she needed to change coincided with the sighting of the titular common tern while on a fishing trip with her ex.
Expanding on this further she said: “When I saw the terns, I was pretty amazed: they really did seem like they were just suspended, dangling on the bottom of a thread. Something about that seeming captivity, being on the end of an invisible line, then breaking free. They were at once familiar and yet so strange and weird. I don’t think I entirely grasped the relevance while I was writing it but now it seems very, very frickin obvious. I spent a year and a half after the tern incident trying to extricate myself from the relationship, bit by bit, section by section. It was fuckin hard work, and I did do a lot of apologising. For me, a common turn means the common moment where you decide you just don’t/ can’t love someone any more, and there’s nothing any of you can do about it.”
Watch/listen to “A Common Tern” below:
For the last three years, focused and reenergised, Savage wrote music for her debut album, stitching together influences and references. “One month I printed out all the lyrics, blu-tacked them to my wall, and drew lines between each corresponding idea. Making sure I’d lyrically covered all the themes I wanted to, linking ideas, deleting repeats, and making me look like a literary serial killer”, she said. The album is littered with personal and cultural references (Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Spice Girls, female pleasure, mental health, and a ceramic owl mug by Scottish alt-rock legend Edwyn Collins, among others), all of which are now sewn into her music like talismans.
A Common Turn artwork & tracklist:
1. A Steady Warmth
2. Corncrakes
3. Dead Pursuits
4. BedStuy
5. Baby Grand
6. Two
7. A Common Tern
8. Chelsea Hotel #3
9. Hotel
10. One