Sing in the darkness, dance to dawn

Thursday music corner: British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi was born in London in 1980. She has released three albums, four EPs and 11 singles since 2010, with all her albums reaching the top 40 of the UK albums chart. Her first self-titled album, released in 2011, received nominations for a Mercury Prize and a Brit Award, while her second and third albums, One Breath (2013) and Hunter (2018) were also nominated for Mercurys. 

The Joy Division-esque Is This All There Is appeared on an EP of the same name released by Calvi in March 2026. It also appeared as the closing theme to Joanna Hogg's 2021 drama, The Souvenir Part II, featuring Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda Swinton.

Anna Calvi - Is This All There Is? (2026)

See also:

Music: Anna Calvi - Eliza (live, 2013)

Music: Anna Calvi - Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover, 2013)

Music: Anna Calvi & David Byrne - Strange Weather (2014)

Marti Friedlander

Remembering her emigration to New Zealand [in 1958, photographer] Marti Friedlander [1928-2016] wrote: 'I had no idea when I arrived I would find it so difficult. This outpost of England was thoroughly unfamiliar to me. The transition from city life to a suburban and rural existence was a revelation I was hardly prepared for... Nevertheless, being optimistic by nature, I set about adapting to the new life ahead of me. I never attempted to make pavlova, but I did preserve fruits and veges, bake bread, climb mountains, wade through rivers, get lost in the bush, and generally embrace a pioneering spirit of sorts. No matter how assimilated one appears on the surface, most migrants have a nostalgia for their own culture. Such ambivalence can seem threatening to the host country [but] I believe that a country's maturity is reflected in the way it regards its minorities, and welcomes the diversity in its midst.

Consequently, taking and making pictures was a crucial means of connecting with people and places in this new land. 'I probably would never have become a professional photographer if I had not shifted here,' Marti noted in her journal in the late 1970s. Photography enabled her to remake herself. Displacement and the loss of what she was most familiar with triggered her creativity. Not surprisingly, migration and the ways immigrants and travellers face new societies which are strange to them are primary themes in her work.

- Leonard Bell, Marti Friedlander, Auckland, 2009, p.151

Botanical tulip

 

Power's coming through the shower

Thursday music corner: Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren are an American indie-folk duo who have previously recorded as Reina del Cid, which has also been Cordova's stage name. Their Youtube channel features a range of acoustic and electric cover versions, including this high-speed acoustic number originally by Minnesota folk-bluegrass band Trampled By Turtles. 

Elle & Toni - Come Back Home (Trampled By Turtles cover, 2021)

See also:

Music: Toni Lindgren - May You Never (John Martyn cover, 2025) 

Music: Reina del Cid - Death Cap (2016)

Music: Trampled By Turtles - Repetition (2015)

I've got a heart full of soul

Thursday music corner: Eternally famous for nurturing the guitar talents of supremos Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, the Yardbirds were highly influential in their blues-rock phase from 1963 to 1968. During that era they released six studio albums, one live album, and a greatest hits compilation. The Yardbirds also released 19 singles, six of which reached the UK top 40: For Your Love, Heart Full of Soul, the Five Yardbirds EP, and Evil Hearted You (all 1965), plus Shapes of Things (1966). When the band split in 1968, two of its members went on to form prog rock group Renaissance, and Jimmy Page, of course, formed Led Zeppelin.

Heart Full of Soul was a 1965 non-album single written by future 10cc frontman and songwriter-for-hire Graham Gouldman. It was the first Yardbirds single released after Eric Clapton's departure from the band, and featured his replacement, Jeff Beck. The single's Beck-driven raga rock tones and fuzzbox were innovative and helped popularise progressive rock. The single reached number 2 in the UK and Canada, number 3 in New Zealand, and number 9 in the US.

The Yardbirds - Heart Full of Soul (1965)

See also:

Music: Yardbirds - Steeled Blues (b-side, 1965)

Music: Yardbirds - Shapes of Things (1966)

Music: Renaissance - Northern Lights (1978)

The perils of elephantiasis

STRONGLY ADVISE AGAINST ELEPHANTS STOP BRITISH FARMERS REPORTED TO BE WORRIED ABOUT SPREAD OF ELEPHANTIASIS WHICH HAS PARALYSED AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS STOP TOO VULNERABLE TO INVADING ENEMY IF RELIANCE PLACED ON ELEPHANTS FOR MILITARY PURPOSES STOP ALSO DANGER OF INFECTING PUBLIC SERVICE STOP THIS IS COSTING ME TOO MUCH

FAIRBURN

- Telegram from A.R.D. [Rex] Fairburn to Denis Glover, 15 November 1954, quoted in Lauris Edmonds (ed.), The Letters of A.R.D. Fairburn, Auckland, 1981, p.222