The Anchoress

Welsh multi-instrumentalist and producer The Anchoress (aka Catherine Anne Davies) returns with As We Once Were - a bold, unflinching new album from one of the UK’s most distinctive voices.

Blending the drama of Scott Walker with the ambition of auteurs such as Kate Bush and Weyes Blood, the new album lands August 2026 via Last Night From Glasgow. T

he 14-track record marks her third studio release, following the Welsh Music Prize-nominated The Art Of Losing and the cult favourite Confessions Of A Romance Novelist.

Featuring an all-star cast of guest vocalists, including Mercury Music Prize nominees Hannah Peel and Welsh-Cornish musician Gwenno, long-time collaborator James Dean Bradfield from Manic Street Preachers also contributes electric guitar and vocals to Throw Over Your Man - a celebratory queer rock anthem that conjures that intoxicating feeling of being drawn into someone’s orbit for the first time, inspired by the love letters between literary legends Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West.

The album also features Eaves Wilder on Damsels, a song that celebrates female icons from history. Set against a dreamy 4AD-inspired 12-string guitar shoegaze soundtrack - think Cocteau Twins meets Sharon Van Etten - the song 'takes inspiration from the history lessons I got as a teenager listening to the Manic Street Preachers Faster and PCP, except this time it’s strictly a girl zone,' says Davies.

The song sits at the heart of an album shaped by themes of motherhood, generational resilience and female strength in the face of loss and trauma. 'I wanted to reclaim the idea of the ‘damsel in distress’ it was never an archetype I identified with. I look back at my Mum and her Mother and all I saw was strength. 'We are made of Welsh steel,’ she used to say to me.'