Album Review: Anna B Savage - You and i are Earth (City Slang)

The third album from Anna B Savage, You & i are Earth, finds the London-born singer/songwriter (now based in rural Donegal, Ireland) in a markedly different emotional landscape than her earlier work. Her 2021 debut, A Common Turn and 2023 follow-up in|FLUXwere acclaimed for raw introspection and a fiercely independent streak. Savage’s lyrics grappled with self-doubt and celebrated solitude. Those records navigated heartbreak, existential angst, and the hard-won pride of self-contentment. By contrast, You & i are Earth blooms from a place of healing and openness. On May 28, Anna B Savage will perform for the first time in Romaniaas part of the 9th DokStation Music Documentary Film Festival at Control Club.

The album’s production and arrangements mirror the organic themes in delicate detail. Producer John “Spud” Murphy (Lankum, Black Midi) brings an earthy warmth to the sound. Savage invited a cohort of Ireland’s finest contemporary musicians to enrich the palette. Members of Dublin’s classical-inflected Crash Ensemble and folk innovators Lankum contribute strings, clarinet, harmonium, bouzouki, and more, while indie-folk artist Anna Mieke lends vocals.

You & i are Earth is an uninterrupted love album. A cycle of songs tracing the infatuation, mutual discovery, and quiet domestic bliss of a blossoming relationship. But Savage’s take on the love-song genre is richly layered. “Mo Cheol Thú,” for example, paints a tender vignette of two lovers sharing language and art in a warm home. And “Lighthouse” finds Savage extolling her partner as a guiding presence. Yet alongside the sweetness comes the nervous hope of forging a new life in a new land, making the album as much about place as person. In “Donegal,” she makes a pact with the sea, asking the Atlantic waves to “please look after me” in her adopted home. Love here isn’t just between two people, but between an artist and the land that has embraced her.

You & i are Earth borrows its name from a 17th-century earthenware plate, inscribed with the haunting phrase, uncovered in a London sewer. Savage was entranced by the artifact’s simple poetry. With it, she links her modern love story to a lineage of timeless romantic art. This sense of deep time and continuity permeates the album, while Savage’s lyrics fold into Irish folklore and myth. The lead single “Agnes” was inspired by Celtic fairy lore, which says one can become lost in a familiar field unless you turn your coat inside-out to break the enchantment.

The song itself personifies Agnes as a capricious spirit of transformation. At once benevolent and frightening, guiding the narrator to an ego-death over a swirling waltz of instrumentation. Savage duets with Anna Mieke, who serves as the otherworldly echo of Agnes’s character. In its mythic frame, it brings to mind the emotional architectures of Joanna Newsom, though Savage keeps her fables closer to the bone.

Throughout the album, nature is not just scenery but character. Birds, trees, and water are auspicious signs and companions. When she sings, “Is there a home out here for me forever?” on “Donegal,” her voice soars over fiddle-like strings in a way that invokes the Irish landscape. Even the Gaelic title “Mo Cheol Thú” (roughly “You are my music”) signals how love and music intertwine as sources of life.

The overall sound is softer and more consistent in tone than Savage’s past albums. Savage’s voice has always been capable of quivering vulnerability, rich alto depths and sudden passionate surges. She often sings on You & i are Earth in a hushed, almost prayerful register. In the ballad “I Reach for You in My Sleep,” her voice is aria-like in purity yet soft and close. When the chorus blossoms against a glowing string countermelody, it’s one of the album’s most euphoric highs. Conversely, the closing pair of tracks (“You & i are Earth” and “The Rest of Our Lives”) are softly majestic, allowing her vocals to float. The production throughout favors this organic quality. Nothing feels overly polished or synthetic.

You & i are Earth favors description and atmosphere over overt critique or dramatic conflict. One can delve into the echoes of Seamus Heaney’s nature poetry or the parallels to the British folk-rock greats like John Martyn. In this way, You & i are Earth recalls certain strains of folk and textural storytelling of visual art. There is also a kinship with the Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon (The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers), whose luminous films animate folklore as material experience.

Ultimately, You & I are Earth offers a rare portrayal of happiness as compelling as sorrow. In Savage’s world, one can hear the Atlantic wind, smell rain in the moss, and feel the glow of two domestic hearts coming to the quiet realization that by embracing love and nature, we might rediscover the primal truth that sparked us in the first place.