MUMBAI: Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Sally Potter will release her new album ANATOMY due out May 2 via Bella Union. Today she shares new album cut “Words,” beckoning listeners to sink deeper into the record’s narrative. As a driving piano melody creates a hypnotic aura, Sally sings of the significance of language in our age of non-stop information, and how abandoning the meaning of words has already brought us to a concerning tipping point. Sally shares, “‘Words’ is a love song to language: the universal miracle we take for granted. The first sounds uttered, somewhere, a long time ago, evolved into a complex form of communication that we abuse at our peril, for it is the most precious tool we have. “Words matter” is the repeated refrain in this song, and they do. They can be used as a weapon, a distorting mirror, or as a source of solace and clarity. ‘Words’ urges us to honour the beautiful human privilege of speech.”
Sally Potter has been exploring themes of human connectedness, morality, and mortality in a career that has spanned four decades, encompassing works as varied as the speculative historical epic Orlando and the acerbically witty comedy-drama The Party. In addition to her film work, Sally is a musician and singer-songwriter, a parallel vocation that began with improvised performances and concerts in the 1970s and 1980s and continued through composing music for the soundtracks of many of her critically lauded films. Her second album, ANATOMY is an entirely new affair for the multi-disciplinary artist—an eclectic and boldly visionary collection of songs that seek to tackle our species’ symbiotic relationship with the Earth, all while reflecting on the emotional threads that intertwine us all as people who share this planet.
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The album contains shimmers of Billie Holiday’s empathy and wisdom, Patti Smith’s poetry and Laurie Anderson’s meticulous euphoria: all artists that have inspired Sally’s music in one way or another. After working with the Roma band Taraf de Haidouks and the legendary string ensemble the Kronos Quartet on her film The Man Who Cried, Sally was taken by both groups’ approaches to music, which have also found their way onto ANATOMY.
ANATOMY leaves us not with a sense of impending doom, but a reinvigorated mandate to search for answers within ourselves. “I don’t think there is, at the moment, a more urgent theme to tackle, poetically or lyrically, than the fate of the earth itself for future generations,” says Sally. But these songs are not about making people feel guilty, or afraid—but rather, calling us to wake up to where we are, look each other in the eye, grieve together for what’s already lost and somehow find the ground on which we can start to be hopeful.”
