Sabotage (Looks So Easy)
Some people lift others up. They’re altruistic and constructive. Then there are the energy vampires who have perfected the art of destruction. It’s about toxic masculinity and I’m channelling my inner Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde here to raise a middle finger to every man who played the victim when they were called out.
Catherine Anne Davies
Sabotage (Looks So Easy) is the second single from the album In Memory Of My Feelings, the result of a one-off collaboration between Catherine Anne Davies (The Anchoress) and Bernard Butler. 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.
In contrast to the piano led end-of-days address The Breakdown, Sabotage is the album’s emphatic guitar driven moment of celebratory catharsis.
Sabotage was written when we reconvened a few years after anxiously writing the first set of songs, by which time I think we had both been trampled on a little … as is our style, without talking about it to each other, we consequently wanted to smash the room up a little and say ‘that’s enough now thanks.
Bernard Butler
The Breakdown
- Catherine Anne Davies – vocals
- Bernard Butler – piano
- Rex Horan – upright bass
The Breakdown is the first offering to be lifted from the forthcoming collaborative album by Catherine Anne Davies (aka The Anchoress) and Bernard Butler. ‘In Memory Of My Feelings’ will be released via Needle Mythology on 18th September, 2020 and is notable as the first new master recording for Pete Paphides’ label.
The Breakdown explores the personal price to the pursuit of economic wealth and the failures of free market capitalism, framed through the story of one investment banker’s catastrophic breakdown. Butler adds “Musically the song is deliberately dysfunctional with an unorthodox slowed up 10/8 meter. The piano arpeggio is played forwards then backwards to symbolise the dysfunctional dreamlike beauty of the breakdown”
Written by Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler | Produced & mixed by Bernard Butler at Studio 355, London | Published by Warner Chappell / Copyright Control
Sabotage (Looks So Easy) and The Breakdown are taken from the forthcoming album In Memory Of My Feelings – Limited edition formats include 2LP +7” with signed lyric sheet and gatefold replica CD with signed postcard available for a limited period exclusively via the Official store.
Out 18th September on Needle Mythology. PRE-ORDER HERE