The Anchoress Delivers Queer Literary Rock Anthem Featuring James Dean Bradfield Ahead of New Album “As We Once Were”]

The Anchoress Delivers Queer Literary Rock Anthem Featuring James Dean Bradfield Ahead of New Album “As We Once Were”]

The Anchoress has spoken to NME about her literary-inspired single ‘Throw Over Your Man’, which sees her reuniting with Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield.

The song is the latest release from Catherine Anne Davies’ forthcoming album ‘As We Once Were’, set for release on June 7.

Inspired by the correspondence between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West, the single is a queer rock anthem capturing the exhilarating feeling of first infatuation. It continues Davies’ long-running collaboration series with Bradfield, following their tour together and work on the 2018 Manics album ‘Resistance Is Futile’.

“[The single is] born out of my life-long passion for Woolf’s written work but also because of the profound awakening it provided for me as a queer teenager still figuring out how to be in the world,” said Davies, who holds a PhD in literature and queer theory.

“These letters were signposts from the past for an imagined future for myself.”

She also shared that Manic Street Preachers were the band who “first taught me how to incorporate the literary world into rock n roll”, making Bradfield the natural choice to “instinctively ‘get’ what I was trying to do here”.

The song features a music video directed by JJ Eringa, though filming was paused when Davies broke her arm during production, requiring surgery and a metal plate insertion.

Davies described the track as her “celebratory queer anthem of sorts” and envisioned it as “raucous and pulsating, to conjure that intoxicating feeling of being drawn into someone’s orbit for the first time”.

The title is a direct quote from Woolf’s 1927 letter to Vita: “Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads.” Davies noted it’s essentially a dinner invitation with rather debauched undertones.

Her love for Woolf began in adolescence, providing a “profound awakening” as “a queer teenager still figuring out how to be in the world”. Reading those letters as a teenager created a sense of cross-century kinship, feeling those writers had “given voice to the unspoken”.

“For years I’ve wanted to write a song inspired by the letters between Woolf and Vita and I’ve never lean quite so heavily into source material before,” Davies explained. Working with such source material requires a different songwriting process than simply “vomiting your heart out onto the page”.

Working with Bradfield began when Davies asked him to contribute guitar parts, later expanding to include his surprise vocal contribution on the chorus. “He said ‘just in case you might want it,’ as if you might not want that incredible voice on your record!” The collaboration became an accidental duet that Davies felt added necessary grit alongside the feminine energy.

“It wasn’t my original intention,” she said. “But it was serendipitous, and I think it adds that grit and edge the track needs alongside all that female energy. James balances it out.”

Davies, whose family is Welsh, credited Manic Street Preachers with fundamentally changing her life trajectory, noting their music functioned as “a kind of self-directed education” and that they gave her “a sense of belonging that my immediate world wasn’t providing.” Their 1994 album ‘The Holy Bible’ was particularly influential.

“They’re genuinely warm, generous people,” Davies said. “During some very dark periods in my life they’ve shown up in ways I’ll always be grateful for. Nicky [Wire] and James in particular seem to have an uncanny instinct for exactly when to pick up the phone.”

She reflected that collaborating with Bradfield on a song “soaked in literary and queer history” felt like everything coming full circle. The track also features a “queer choir” including composer Bishi, producer Rookes, and musical director Vicky Falconer Pritchard, creating an “orgiastic call and response between ‘Vita’ and ‘Virginia'” that dynamically pans throughout the song’s climax.

The music video incident occurred when Davies “fell backwards in a really awkward way” and “completely snapped” her arm about an hour into filming. She underwent surgery and wore plaster while completing the remainder with “clever camera angles, lots of draped fabric, and buckets of ingenuity.”

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The collaboration builds on their previous work, including 2021’s ‘The Exchange’ and her cover of their 1994 classic ‘This Is Yesterday’, alongside numerous live performances together over the years.

Davies’ debut album since 2021’s ‘The Art of Losing’ follows the birth of her daughter, addressing societal assumptions about mothers in music. She documented stereotypes and comments people made, noting “motherhood radicalised me” and challenged the expectation that she would “mellow out” or abandon touring.

‘As We Once Were’ arrives August 7 with a London 100 Club show on August 22. Tickets are available through standard channels.

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