TCM Alumni Stories — Anna Vincent releases her solo album

Anna Vincent is a creative powerhouse. Making music for the past two decades, in her debut solo album, ‘Under the Glass’ (launching today on October 29), she fully embraces the vulnerability of only just beginning to know herself.

Anna is also a Creative Map alumna, and we are thrilled to catch up with her to talk about her creative process and lessons learned while developing this new body of work.

To support Anna’s incredible new release, you can stream her album, order the beautiful limited edition CD, book tickets to see her debut live show on Nov 1st in London, or follow her on Instagram.

You can listen to one of my favourites from the album, the debut single, ‘Naxos’, above. It’s a lush homage to romantic travelling in the Greek islands, assured to leave you with wanderlust and gorgeous “blissed-out-sunset-at-the-beach” vibes.

Personally, I can’t wait to receive my copy of the limited edition CD pack, beautifully designed by Anna’s collaborator Max Bloom.

Q: So many congratulations on this new beautiful project, Anna! How are you feeling?

AV: Thank you so much!  I’m feeling excited that it’s finally out in the world and also a bit nervous because it’s been over two years since I released any new music, and this solo project is quite different to Heavy Heart, my previous band.  

I’m very proud of the music and the record as a whole though, and I’m hopeful that people listening to it will get what I was trying to do.  I rarely feel fully confident in the things I do, but this is as close as I’ve ever got to that feeling!

Could you tell us a bit about the process of working on ‘Under the Glass’? How did it begin and develop for you?

Like everyone else, at the start of the pandemic I was facing a year of cancelled plans, worry and uncertainty.  My initial response was to count myself out of everything.  I guess it was a feeling of defiance and disappointment, and general negativity.  In my case, the bands I was playing with had had to scrap a year of touring and festivals, and I just felt deflated and defeated.  I’d had no real intention of making any new music in 2020, and I didn’t really have any ideas for songs, so I thought I might as well use the time learning a new skill.  So I started teaching myself fingerpicking on the guitar.  

It’s a technique used in a lot of folk and country music, and it was something I had tried a few times in the past and given up on because I was probably lazy and couldn't make progress fast enough.  But with the days and months suddenly open ahead of me, this time it was different.  I watched videos online and started to develop my technique, and eventually these initial experimentations started to take the form of songs.  

In fact, ‘Naxos’, the first single I released from the album a few weeks ago, was also the first song I wrote in this way.  I think that sometimes learning a new skill can really unlock your creativity, and it was quite exciting to feel that suddenly there were all these new places I could take my music.  

I made rough demos on my laptop, but still had no intention at this stage of showing anyone or of ever releasing the music.  It was actually really nice just making music for myself again, the way I had when I very first started trying to write songs when I was 14 or 15.  Being in bands almost constantly for the past 20 years had instilled in me the idea of writing with live shows and a specific audience in mind.  But with that stuff taken away, all that was left was the idea of writing a song which I thought was good.  From this feeling of limitation and restriction came a real sense of freedom.

I love the art direction — the butterflies for each album track make me think of the caterpillar’s transformation, bursting forth from the cocoon. And the photography and styling brings to mind the power and magnetism of Bowie, but through a feminine, more organic lens. You are intimately involved with all creative aspects of your musical projects, could you tell us more about this and about the visual universe of ‘Under the Glass’?

Thank you!  The butterflies, and the photos for the album were created by Max Bloom, who as well as being my other half, is also a brilliant musician and visual artist, and also played on and produced ‘Under the Glass’.  

I always knew I wanted butterflies to be a part of the visual universe of the album and I love your interpretation of their significance: you’re absolutely right, there is definitely a feeling here of transformation and rebirth, and they seemed to symbolise this perfectly.  

There’s a line in the title track which goes, “Time’s a butterfly everybody wants to pin down” and this is maybe the central message of ‘Under the Glass’.  I was interested in the idea of music - or indeed any artform - being our attempt to capture and understand something fleeting, delicate, and intangible.  It put me in mind of the way the Victorians used to pin butterflies under glass: it’s rather macabre, capturing beauty by killing it, but I suppose the idea was to be able to observe it and consider it more easily like that.  It’s a very human thing; taking beauty out of the world and hiding it away forever  in a dusty case.  

On the back of the album I’ve used a found photo of butterflies pinned under glass, and when I was discussing these ideas with Max, he suggested he could also design and screen-print a poster with a different butterfly for each song on the album on it.  When I saw how good they looked I knew I wanted to use them as the artwork for each single as well.  

I’m so pleased you saw a Bowie reference in the styling for my press photos and the album cover.  I decided quite early on that I wanted to take some pictures outside on Walthamstow Marshes near where we live, because it has quite an otherworldly atmosphere to it, and it feels like this oasis of nature inside the grey city.  In a similar way, I thought it might be interesting to juxtapose the greens and browns of the natural world with something a bit more metallic and graphic - a bit more ‘city’.  I found this gold lurex dress online, with black chevrons down the front, and as soon as I saw it I knew it was the one!  I’ve grown up in the city and it’s a big part of who I am, but with this album I’m also exploring a softer, more pastoral mood as well.

You have mentioned before that, as you began, you had no intention of putting this work out. What made you change your mind?

Throughout writing these songs I truly had no intention of releasing them, but it was Max who made me start to think that they might eventually see the light of day.  He knew I’d been writing but I was quite hesitant to show him my demos.  One day he finally persuaded me and I played him Naxos and he was so encouraging and seemed so excited about it that we immediately sat down and started putting together the beginnings of the version you hear on the album.

We had already been working together for a little while writing pop songs for other artists, so it felt very natural to work on each new song with him, and his creativity and brilliance really brought my ideas to life and took them somewhere I never could have reached alone.  Although my name is on this album, it’s very much a collaboration, and Max played pretty much all the instruments except the drums on the record.  So in short, it took someone whose opinion I value and trust to show me what these songs could be.

By your own admission, you have always struggled with self-doubt. I believe this is an incredibly universal experience, especially for creative people. Did you face any fears or blocks in the making of this project, or the publishing of it? If so, how did you deal with them?

I struggle with self-doubt every single day, and every creative person I know seems to be the same, so I guess that’s comforting in a way!  Unusually for me, I actually experienced relatively few blocks during the writing process, because in my mind these songs were just for me, and it was a relief not to be writing with the aim of releasing.  That really freed me from the usual fears and restrictions I put on myself when creating, and definitely opened up creative pathways which I never would have allowed myself to explore before.  

The blocks and the old fears really only started coming back quite recently, once I started to send the album around to music industry contacts, and once I began to make plans to release it.  I suddenly had this flood of doubts and second thoughts wash over me, and started falling back into bad habits like comparing myself to my peers, craving acceptance and approval from the industry, and desiring some kind of ‘success’ from the record.  It’s not to say these things shouldn’t be aimed for, but they can really start to distort your perception of the work, and make you lose sight of what your original goal was, which in my case was to make an album of songs I liked and felt proud of.  

I definitely had a few knock-backs, especially at the stage where I was sending the songs to record labels, and it was quite hard to find ways to deal with this sudden wave of negative emotion.  However I think what really helped me was playing the album to a few select friends whose opinions I trusted, and getting some lovely and supportive comments from them.  

I also realised, with some relief, that since the pandemic I’d started to care a bit less about all the trappings of the music industry which I’d been so wrapped up in before, so it was easier to let go of some of that stuff.  By setting my sights slightly lower I wouldn’t set myself up for disappointment, and I was able to enjoy the process and appreciate even the smaller successes for what they were.  I think the pandemic really helped me get things into perspective about what was important in my life, what was in my control, and what wasn’t.  Trying not to worry about things you can’t control is a really useful exercise I think.

Could you pinpoint what, in your process, was the easiest or where you felt most in the flow, and what was the most challenging, or where you felt the most resistance?

The first six or seven songs I wrote for the album seemed almost to come out of nowhere.  When I look back now I can hardly remember how I wrote them, and I do think I was in that flow state during those months.  But most of all, I was having fun and enjoying the process, so it didn’t feel like work at all, and looking back I think that this was so important.  

I’ve often struggled when it comes to fitting lyrics to my songs in the past, and overthinking has definitely played a part in this.  Lyrically this album is the most honest thing I have ever done, and because of that I actually think the words came a lot more easily too.  For the first time maybe ever, I wasn’t trying to be someone else, or trying to be cool; I just wanted to write something that was true and meant something to me.  Most of the lyrics started as loose poems which I’d written here and there during the preceding year, so I had a starting point for what the songs were about, and that small amount of preparation really meant the foundations of the songs were strong.  

I also think that being honest about who I am and how I feel has been a huge step for me - a transformation - and I do feel like I am free now to be the artist I’ve always wanted to be.  I did feel a bit of resistance with the last couple of songs I wrote, perhaps because by this time I knew I was going to release it as an album, and some of the old fears started to come in and influence my creative decisions.  But the fact that I had no real time pressure or deadline, and the ongoing encouragement and support from Max, definitely helped me to overcome these blocks.

One of the most powerful moments I have witnessed was your process of publishing your back catalogue of work – fully owning the breadth of your oeuvre, being proud of past experiences, and clearing up incredible space and energy for the new. What made you decide to do it? How did you feel during this process?

Thank you!  Well, you were a big part of that process for me, and sharing that work with you gave me such a valuable perspective on it, and a sense of affirmation that it was actually worth something.  

The process of making ‘Under the Glass’ has been a lot about breaking down walls I’ve put up around myself, and owning up to who I am.  As part of this I started to examine my back catalogue: music from all the different eras of my life so far.  My tendency in the past has been to be ashamed of my old work, and want to distance myself from it, to rip it up and start again.  But in doing that I was actually harming myself, and by not owning my past work I realised I was living with this very painful feeling of my life so far having been a waste of time.  

I couldn’t keep doing that to myself, or to my fellow collaborators, so I dug out my old hard drives and started to listen to these old songs, and I couldn’t believe how great they sounded.  A bit ramshackle and lo-fi, yes, but also full of this youthful energy and exuberance which was really exciting to hear.  And I couldn’t believe how ambitious and audacious some of those ideas were musically.  I showed Max and he loved them too, and that gave me the confidence to put them together into an album of sorts.  It’s really just for me and the people who were originally involved, but the process of doing this really felt like I was finally able to see all my work together as an essential part of my creative journey.  

Without those early ideas I could never have written this album, and those projects also took me on adventures and taught me things which have infomed who I am now.  From a psychological perspective it also felt like I needed to lay to rest any negativity surrounding my past so that I could move forward.  So my message would be that no work is wasted, and everything you create is an essential and valuable part of this journey.  Don’t throw anything away, and don’t be too quick to label something as rubbish when other people might be able to see that good in it. 

What is your favourite song from ‘Under the Glass’, and why?

It changes from day to day so it’s quite hard to pick one.  I love ‘Naxos’ because it was the first song I wrote for this album, and it’s about a beautiful holiday Max and I took before the pandemic, so it kind of acts as a little portal back to a very different world.  But I also love ‘Thin Skin’, which will be the next single, because I’m really proud of the melody, and ‘Seeing Double’ because it’s a good old-fashioned love song!

Any favourite tools from the course? Have you continued to apply them since it finished?

The Creative Map was absolutely an integral part of me being able to make this album.  I was excited to try the course, but I realised from the outset that I already had quite a lot of resistance to truly opening up and understanding my creative self.  I had got into so many negative habits over the years and the process of undoing these was quite painful and tricky, so my natural instinct was to want to run away from it all.  

When we came to write our Vision, I really struggled with my pessimism, and initially I didn’t allow myself to truly write what I wanted: I was far too rooted in what I had told myself was ‘realistic’.  But through the talks you gave as well as hearing new perspectives from other participants, I actually opened myself up to the process, and the change was almost immediate.  Once I was able to break through and actually write the Vision I wanted to see, everything else flowed from there and I found it to be such a rewarding and exciting process.

I still use the techniques you taught me every day - from journaling, to regularly evaluating and updating my Vision, to maintaining and nurturing my contacts list, and, perhaps most essential of all for me (the eternal procrastinator!), making to-do lists.  This has honestly been life-changing and has allowed me to structure my days better, and feel a sense of achievement from completing even small tasks.  

Overall though, what TCM has given me is a quiet confidence in myself as a creative person: something I have really never had before.  It has given me simple but effective methods for tuning out the distracting noise of the outside world and finding my flow.  Often we’re made to feel that art is trivial, and that the things we make are not essential to life, but if TCM, and this past year, has taught me anything, it’s that it’s more important than ever for us to keep creating, keep reflecting the world we live in, and keep making things which fill our lives with beauty and meaning.

Do you have any rituals for keeping grounded and balanced?

I definitely find that limiting my time on social media helps - it’s such a distraction and a drain.  I also try to worry a bit less about ‘being successful’, whatever that even means.  For such a long time I felt like every scenario was some kind of competition, and that really led me to feel very upset and disappointed a lot of the time.  It might just be getting a bit older, but I truly care a lot less now about being successful in the traditional sense, and more about being creatively successful, which to me is just about making something which I and the people I care about like.  Other than that, I try to balance my musical life with things like reading, learning languages, running, a bit of Pilates, bread-making, the usual stuff.  And if all else fails and it’s just a really rubbish day then a nice bath usually does the trick!

What would you tell your younger self when you first embarked on your creative journey?

I’d say trust yourself and do the thing that feels right, because your instincts are usually pretty good.  It’s when you start relying too heavily on other people’s opinions that you make the wrong decisions.  I’d also say try to enjoy things and live in the moment, because even the stressful bits work out okay.  And don’t worry so much about other people!

Anna Vincent is a singer-songwriter from London. Her debut solo album 'Under the Glass' is out 29th October 2021 via Ultimate Blends. Order here.

She is also marking the release with a special full–band show on November 1st in London. Click here for tickets.