SWISS singer Anna Erhard will showcase songs from her third album Botanical Garden at Coventry’s Central Library on October 5.
She put out her first solo material in 2019, following the breakup of Basel folk collective Serafyn.
“Writing these songs under my own name was really freeing. It felt like I was giving up everything I had already built to start over, which was scary but exciting.” When lockdown halted that fresh start, it also unleashed a new sense of purpose in songwriting, which became a kind of surrogate for long, irreverent conversations with friends. “I was dreaming myself away from this pandemic situation,” she remembers. “I guess I missed this whole goofy part of life, this lightness, and maybe because that was missing so much in my life, I found it in music.”
Her 2021 debut album Short Cut showcased her musical versatility, pairing fuzzed-out guitar hooks with electronic textures and samples, underscored by that perfectly crisp, droll vocal.
This was followed in 2022 by Campsite, whose nostalgic eponymous track earned plaudits from the likes of Marc Riley, Steve Lamacq, Lauren Laverne and John Kennedy. Botanical Garden continues in this vein, its deceptively slacker ambience masking slick arrangements and watertight, driving percussion – with no shortage of colourful synthlines courtesy of Erhard’s pocket piano.
Friendships played a large part in the recording process of Botanical Garden. As well as working with longtime collaborator Pola Roy, she invited Berlin friends to drop in at the studio for sessions that sat somewhere between a 9-5 routine and a spontaneous hang. Starting off jamming ideas on a modulated synthesizer, they would create loops to layer into guitar parts, incorporating samples and happy accidents along the way.
