In Memory Of My Feelings is the result of a one-off collaboration between Catherine Anne Davies (The Anchoress) and Bernard Butler. Among the ten songs featured are the unearthly end-of-days address The Breakdown and the triumphant four-to-the-floor excoriations of Sabotage (Looks So Easy). Although four years lapsed between its conception and completion, In Memory Of My Feelings was written and recorded by Catherine and Bernard over a period of just 15 days.

For Catherine, the sessions which yielded the songs on the record bookended a period of immense personal upheaval. When the pair first met the flurry of songs she wrote in the wake of that period prompted intense interest from major labels.

Perhaps looking to Bernard Butler to repeat the success of his sessions with another singular Welsh talent Duffy, one of those labels suggested that a meeting between Butler and Davies might result in a comparable commercial breakthrough. “I’m not especially interested in recreating whatever’s worked on previous projects,” Butler explains, “Odd is what I look for – and, by ‘odd’ what I really mean is ‘character’.

For Catherine Anne Davies, suddenly in a studio with a musician whose early work had soundtracked many of her own musical awakenings, the most surprising thing about the whole experience was just how natural it felt. “We talked about the two Polly Jean Harvey and John Parish albums,” she says, “–not so much for the sound of them, but for the fact that they designated a neutral space where the two could meet.”