Pastures New

Or how I found my golden unicorn...

When I was looking for a new label home it was important to me that the people I would be working with for the next chapter of The Anchoress put ethics at the very centre of how they operated. After nearly a decade of making records, I feel incredibly lucky to have built a sustainable career and have a wonderfully passionate fanbase. However, at times, I have also felt exhausted and depleted at the ways in which some corners of the industry operate in a way that just doesn’t sit right with my soul.

“Perhaps I’m not built for this” is a thought I’ve had many times over.

But then, if I’m not built for this, why not build a new world to live in instead?

I’ve always been told that I’m somewhat “idealistic” but, to paraphrase John Lennon, I’m not the only one.

Over the last few years I’ve enjoyed partnering with my equally idealistic management company to release Versions (as a profit share endeavour with Drowned In Sound) on eco mix vinyl and do my bit to show that you can make more environmentally conscious decisions without compromising on sound quality.

But, the prospect of - if it’s as successful as The Art of Losing was - being responsible for shipping over ten thousand copies of whatever my next album was going to be, led myself and Sean to begin conversations to see whether there might be a better way to build and grow The Anchoress. A way that could bring in some other lovely people to oversee and do some of the invisible but crucial work that goes into preparing a release, and assembling the army of people that help to make a record a success.

At times this has felt like looking for a golden unicorn.

In an industry increasingly obsessed only with streaming numbers (about which I couldn’t give two shiny hoots for the two pence I’ll see in returns) and forgetting that there are many people that love and still want beautiful physical objects. It’s felt at times like a fruitless search. I kept getting told that the things I wanted didn’t exist, or weren’t good business.

But you all know by now that I’m a stubborn and tenacious bugger.

And, dear reader, I did not give up on looking for said golden unicorn.

And now, I am very glad to say that, while it took me a long while, I’ve been lucky enough to find my lovely new label home in the form of Last Night From Glasgow - a “not for profit label” with an ethical framework at the very heart of what they do, and a passion for vinyl that surpasses even my own.

Label boss Ian Smith impressed upon me from our very first conversation a sense of shared ideals and that doing “good” is also good business. I think he once described the operation as a “socialist record collective”, and the label manages to balance a social and environmental conscience (they manufacture locally and minimise both manufacturing waste and transportation) that is also matched by a love of hard work and ambition to do well for all of their artists. Their wonderful community of members are much like my own brilliant and supportive Patreons - the people power that make the music happen.

So, for all of these reasons, I am supremely excited to let you know that the next Anchoress album will be coming out via the good folk at Last Night From Glasgow.

Sean is almost as excited that his lounge will now longer be a temporary postal room…

More news soon,

Catherine x

p.s. The very last 25 copies of the limited 12” 6 track vinyl EP Versions: Encore are available here on preorder - it’s out December 6th 2024, strictly limited to 500 signed copies.