Anna of the North has revealed ‘Someone’, the second single to be taken from their debut album Lovers due for release on the 8th of September. Speaking about ‘Someone’, the band say: “We think almost everyone has woken up after a big night, instantly regretting something that happened. It’s about how easy it is to break your promises when you’ve had a couple of drinks. Going deeper, the song is about accepting that you’re only human and to learn how to forgive yourself for your own mistakes and accepting that sometimes we need someone to save us from repeating any old habits.”
‘Lovers’ is an album “deeply rooted in heartbreak, a subject that courses through the veins of all ten tracks – through the turmoil, the guilt and the tentative joy of finally letting yourself move on.”
In three years since the release of debut single ‘Sway’, the Norwegian-Kiwi duo of Anna Lotterud and Brady Daniell-Smith have paved the way for their full-length debut following a run of singles which have notched up over 60 million streams. Recorded in Oslo and mixed in Copenhagen and London by Luke Smith (Foals, Depeche Mode), Lovers is a coherent but endlessly varied beast.
‘The story of the project began five years back. Anna was working in a shop in a small town near Oslo, settled with her first love whilst anticipating a life of routine and normality, when a customer came in and changed her life. Polite and well groomed, the woman, a stranger to Anna, began making daily visits, browsing for hours but never buying a thing. One afternoon, for reasons Anna will never know, the woman approached her and implored her to abandon the traditional life she had planned out, and go and expand her horizons. The plea jolted something in Anna, and in an act of uncharacteristic spontaneity, she booked a flight to Australia, leaving behind the life and the person she thought she’d spend her life with.
Her time in Australia was fulfilling but turbulent. She fell in love again, only to have her heart broken as suddenly and inexplicably as her decision to leave Norway in the first place. That’s when she met Brady Daniell-Smith. Brady, who’d been struggling with his own complicated relationships, was performing an acoustic show in Melbourne; Anna was in the audience, drinking with friends. Becoming friends, he encouraged her to find solace in songwriting, discovering they could make music together as a way of exorcising the demons of their love lives and the project was born. He jokingly started calling her “Anna Of The North” and the name stuck.
It’s the two of them combined that make Anna Of The North’s sparse, brooding electro-pop so potent. Brady, who’s from New Zealand and grew up partly in Australia, injects elements of the countries’ bright, vibrant electronic scene to their music; Anna brings the glacial minimalism of her Scandinavian roots.’
Anna of the North’s debut album Lovers is due for release on 8 September via Different Recordings.
The band will play Omeara in London on 26 September and will support Justin Bieber at British Summertime Festival in Hyde Park on 2 July.
Live Dates
01 Jul – Sommerfesten på Giske, NO
02 Jul – British Summer Time, UK
07 Jul – Blissfields Festival, UK
08 Jul – Mad Cool Festival, ES
11 Jul – Skral Festival, NO
14 Jul – Slottsfjell Festival, NO
10 Aug 2017 – Stay Out West, SW
18 Aug – Pukkelpop Festival, BE
23 Aug – Hudson Ballroom – Sydney, AU
24 Aug – Northcote Social Club – Melbourne, AU
26 Aug – Maroochy Music & Vis Arts Festival, AU
09 Sep – Bestival, UK
26 Sep – Omeara – London, UK
09 Nov – Parkteateret – Oslo, No
10 Nov – Det Akademiske Kvarter – Bergen, No
