Anna Calvi “Is this all there is?”

Anna Calvi
“Is this all there is?”
(Domino Records)

The old extended play “EP” format, a throwback to vinyl marketing in years gone by, has retained a surprising relevance and popularity. Sometimes four songs, in the most artful of hands, make for a perfectly sized statement. A novella not a novel, some ten to twenty minutes of your time. Perfect for introductions and renewed encounters…

Anna Calvi knows how to make a statement too. Her latest release is a poised four song collection, two originals and two covers, featuring a stellar cast of characters. It crashes into your world courtesy of one Iggy Pop, whom Calvi wrote specifically for on “God’s lonely man”. A glam beat, which Calvi had long wanted to take for a spin, pounds out under that voice, that history, that character.

Perfume Genius lends his delectable and singular tones to a duet cover of Bonnie Prince Billy’s “I see a darkness” – their voices somehow becoming two facets of a single soul by the song’s close.

Then a profound left turn, with the always gentle-yet-arresting voice of Laurie Anderson, artfully intoning a cover of Kraftwerk’s Computer World, while Calvi’s own incredible voice creates operatic layers of Ligeti-esque harmonies underneath. It’s everything a cover should be – a chance to encounter the song anew, refreshed after almost half a century of our mixed feelings about digital technology somehow wrapped up in its reporting.

Title song “Is this all there is?”, featuring Matt Berninger from The National, is the final chapter here, whose dark sweeping grandeur is ironically undercut by that searing and provocative question. It’s a welcome reminder that Calvi’s palette is always dramatic, always cinematic.

We caught up in February 2026 to talk about her latest work, and what lies ahead.

Congrats on the new EP. I wondered what your thoughts were going in, in terms of how this EP has taken shape and how that title song fits within it.

Anna Calvi: Yeah, well, I guess the whole EP is asking an existential question, really, about what you’re getting out of life and if it’s enough. And I think it could be taken as a personal thing and also a more potentially spiritual question of, you know, is the everyday life that you’re living, is it really what being alive is about? And I think the way that song sounds is meant to sound like opening up that question to the universe in a way. Like it feels very expansive and wide-screen and that the point of it is that it can never really be answered. You can ask the question, but you can’t ever really get an answer. So, I think the EP is about trying to get to the bottom of that question and beautifully failing, perhaps.

“God’s Lonely Man,” jumps out, so very filmic. I presume Iggy Pop is quite a character to have collaborated with. Did you write this song with him in mind?

Anna Calvi: I did. I really love that kind of glam beat, and I’ve never had it in a song before, and I started writing it and I just thought, he is the only person who could really sing this song. I don’t know if I would have continued it or released it if I hadn’t got his voice on it. It was so meant for him, really. I felt that he, in some ways, embodies the idea of this character of “ God’s Lonely Man” , which is, I suppose, taking your frustration and your sadness and your loneliness and doing everything you can to liberate yourself from your human existence, your physical body. And that’s what he kind of represents for me. So not only thematically, and also I suppose musically, the song felt like it was his.

When I was listening to “ I See a Darkness,” I was struck by just the way that yours and Mike’s voices (Perfume Genius) seemed to almost merge tonally at some points. Was that intentional?

Anna Calvi: No, I hadn’t worked with him before, but I really loved his music. And actually originally my voice was a lot louder in the song, and then when he put his voice on it and it was so kind of crystal clear and so delicate, I just had to rethink how I was singing it. And I sort of hear it like he is kind of light and I’m his shadow. That’s kind of how it sounds to me. And I just thought it was really what I love about the song is that it’s kind of talking about obviously depression, but also friendship. And I think it’s quite rare to have songs about, you know, platonic friendship. And so I thought there was something really nice about the two of us coming together in this song, kind of as friends, talking to each other.

So we need to talk about your cover of Kraftwerk’s “ Computer Love” – which is more or less astonishing. You’ve got Laurie Anderson on lead vocals so this is such an intriguing and surprising pairing of material, arrangement and performers. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to that idea?

Anna Calvi: Thank you, yeah. Well, obviously, you know, I’m a huge fan of, you know, what she does. And originally the backing was very different. It was much more just like a band playing. But then when I soloed her voice, I heard something quite kind of breathtaking, really, kind of very – that she doesn’t really need arranging within a band. And so I stripped everything away and just completely started again and just started to build up the song using my voice. And it became kind of sadder and much more beautiful, I think. I think it’s the way that she says the words as if she’s happy, but what she’s saying is just so desperately sad. And I really like that kind of contradiction about the way she performs it.

I wanted to talk though a little bit about voice and singers, because obviously you have such a singular voice and this EP has such a rich range of voices and styles. What sort of draws you to people when it comes to voices or working with other performers and singers?

Anna Calvi: I think it’s someone that has some kind of truth to their voice, that there’s something that cuts through, there’s a danger to what they do and that you can kind of get through into their soul. That it’s not about perfection, it’s about really expressing something kind of flawed and therefore beautiful. There’s something beautiful in a flawed voice, I think.

There’s that moment when a voice enters your consciousness, whether it’s in a movie performance or in a song, you’re suddenly placed somewhere in time and space. That felt like something you’d achieved with this collection, over and over.

Anna Calvi: Yeah, thank you. I really wanted them to all feel like they were, you know, they were the hero of that moment in the movie, you know? And picking singers that could really run with that and really command that space, and really that you would really believe in the story through the strength of their performance, much in the way that an actor does.

I was reading through your new Substack and I noticed a lovely quote: ”W hen I put a guitar on the stand on stage, I feel hypnotized, I feel absolutely immune to embarrassment.” I think that’s fascinating. I mean, there’s been a lot of on-and-off chatter over the decades about whether the guitar would ever sort of lose its position in music-making, would it become a relic of the 20th century. Clearly, you don’t believe that.

Anna Calvi: I think that any good artist could take any instrument and make something interesting out of it. I think there’s a reason why the guitar has a longevity, and I think it’s – it’s a very easy way to emulate the voice, I think that’s one reason why it’s sticking around, with being able to bend strings and… and also I think obviously like to get the basic chords down is also very easy, so it’s a quick, direct way to get into songwriting that maybe you couldn’t do as much with a violin, for example. So, I think in some form or another it will always be around. And I actually think that a lot of the really interesting guitarists now happen to be women, and I wonder whether part of that is that it feels less tired to see a woman play guitar than it does to see a man play guitar, and that’s given it a breath of life, I think, that it needed.

Yes , that makes a lot of sense. It was such a sort of strutting icon for other clichés about male behavior for so long, certainly in the 20th century.
Talking about the closing song “Is this all there is?” with Matt Berninger of The National could you talk a bit more about the themes that drove the writing? Is it a bit about burn out or disappointment with the world we’re creating?

Anna Calvi: I think the title is wide enough to be able to project whatever that question is for whatever person, you know? I think for me it was more from taking some time out to have a child and being in this sort of cocoon where everything feels very much more instinctive and animalistic, in a way. And then when you come out of that and you go back out into the world, it feels a little bit like being an alien coming down to earth. Like you suddenly are more aware of how insane everything is because you’ve created your own little world for so long, that the real world just feels completely nuts. And you know, I think that there’s a lot of, you know, pressure on individuals to fix their anxiety, for instance, instead of looking at maybe the world that we’re living in is actually a very healthy and normal reaction to feel anxious and maybe that’s what we need to fix, you know? And so I think that’s kind of where it originated , for me.

Yes , and it feels like there’s a bit of bite and ambition under the title, under that question. A sense of challenge.

Anna Calvi: Yeah, like demanding more from your life .

In terms of the collaborative nature of this EP, are there any more people on the Calvi wishlist for future projects – assuming you can tell us of course.

Anna Calvi: I mean, I got my wish list. I mean, I couldn’t really think of a group of singers that is more amazing, really. I mean, you know, I feel very lucky to have got these singers on there. And I think it’s just, especially as a solo artist, it’s such a gift to get to sing with other people, because it’s, you know, the camaraderie of it, it’s quite addictive. So I’m sure it won’t be my last foray into duetting.

Because I was recalling that you’ve covered David Bowie before?

Anna Calvi: Yeah.

And there’s that amazing Christmas TV performance where he duets with Bing Crosby. I was wondering who would be your Bing Crosby in an ideal ‘budget is no issue, logistics are no problem’ kind of situation?

Anna Calvi: Oh, God, I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard to think… I mean, the only person would have been David Bowie. I mean, he’s like the top of the mountain, and Iggy’s right there too, so I feel like duetting with Iggy is pretty much top of the mountain for me, you know.

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