Anatomy by Sally Potter

Sally Potter has been exploring themes of human connectedness, morality, and mortality in a career that has spanned four decades, encompassing works as varied as the speculative historical epic “Orlando” and the acerbically witty comedy-drama “The Party”. In addition to her film work, Sally is a musician and singer-songwriter, a parallel vocation that began with improvised performances and concerts in the 1970s and 1980s and continued through composing music for the soundtracks of many of her critically lauded films. Her second album, ANATOMY is an entirely new affair for the multi-disciplinary artist—an eclectic and boldly visionary collection of songs that seek to tackle our species’ symbiotic relationship with the Earth, all while reflecting on the emotional threads that intertwine us all as people who share this planet.

“I call them ‘love songs to the Earth’,” explains Sally, underlining the deep emotionality running through the album’s 12 tracks. “We're not separate from the Earth, and our downfall is when we think of ourselves as such and see the planet as something we can exploit without consequences.” This sentiment becomes immediately evident on the album's opening title track, a heart-wringing ballad brimming with lilting balalaika, guitar and dulcet accordion melodies. Sally sings of the Earth as a living, breathing thing, its body co-existing with here: “The earth is my body/Skin muscle and bones/She is not mine, but I am hers/And hers alone.”

“The title track ‘Anatomy’ is really the parallel that's being drawn through the whole record—two vulnerable bodies and the links between them,” says Sally. “It’s the most condensed and distilled version of the overall themes of the album.” The songs on ANATOMY carry a double meaning by design, and Sally deftly plays with that symbolism through open-ended lyrics and use of musical touchstones ranging from folk to blues.

“Take ‘My Earth’, for example,” she continues, referring to a stark, downtempo jazz number that sparkles with pattering drums and plaintive slide guitars. “It could be a song about the breakup of a love affair—but when you look at it in another way, it's about the Earth breaking up, and wanting to fight night and day to save it. Each song is written from a different point of view, but they are united under the umbrella theme of the unfolding tragedy of global warming. I wanted to connect with this reality in a way that could both bring solace and also energize.”

Sally began this current stage of her music career with the release of her first studio album, PINK BIKINI, in 2023. A record chronicling her experiences as a young artist and activist in 1960s London, there is a through-line between its songs of youth and rebellion and ANATOMY’s contemplative urgency, following Sally’s lifelong commitment to engaging fiercely with the world around her.

“I've been involved in one form of protest or another my whole life,” she says, “whether it was marching against nuclear weapons when I was 14–that's part of what PINK BIKINI is about–or marching against apartheid in South Africa or marching for women’s and gay rights. The marching never seems to stop, and unfortunately, it doesn't always seem to bring about the desired result. But this record isn’t about holding up a placard or lecturing people—it's trying to bring pleasure through music as a way of processing pain. One of my biggest musical heroes of all time is Billie Holiday, and I think she was the example of somebody who was singing about the most excruciating kinds of political and personal pain, but in a way that made you want to listen again and again, because it had a healing effect. It's as if her voice was processing for all of us, in a beautiful way.”

Musically, the album contains shimmers of Holiday’s empathy and wisdom, but also Patti Smith’s poetry and Laurie Anderson’s meticulous euphoria: all artists that have inspired Sally’s music in one way or another. After working with the Roma band Taraf de Haidouks and the legendary string ensemble the Kronos Quartet on her film “The Man Who Cried”, Sally was taken by both groups’ approaches to music, which have also found their way onto ANATOMY.

It’s not surprising that so much of ANATOMY is full of rich storytelling, given Sally’s background in filmmaking. “I've been writing scripts and screenplays for four decades now, and it's absolutely innate in me to have a feeling for storytelling and structures that develop through time,” she says. “One of the biggest connections for me between music and film is they are both experienced through time. They don't exist unless you watch them or listen to them—they're not objects. There's something about how you work with time and with structure in a film and a song that are the same; I'm always thinking structurally and narratively. Thinking structurally and narratively is not something I consciously set out to do when writing a song, it's just what I've done all my life. My favourite songwriters often make you feel as if a door has been opened inviting you to step through into the world that is being conjured.”

The diversity of ANATOMY’s different moods and feelings are not only due to Sally’s unique vision, but also the group of musicians and collaborators she assembled to bring its stories to life. “I wrote these songs pretty much in solitude, imagining the sound I would hear once in the studio with the musicians,” she says. “This was my first time working with Marta Salogni as a co-producer and mixer of the record—she is a very creative collaborator. She introduced me, amongst others, to Valentina Magaletti, who is an absolutely phenomenal drummer. I've worked repeatedly over the years with Fred Frith, who I met doing improvised gigs many moons ago, and whose unique sound has featured on almost every film soundtrack I’ve made, as well as on PINK BIKINI. And it was wonderful to work with Viktoria Mullova again; she is really one of the best violinists in the world. It’s so moving to hear the music I’ve been working on in isolation for months being played by real musicians for the first time. It feels so generous of them that they're offering back to me what I've imagined hearing but haven't truly heard yet.”

As ANATOMY comes to a close, Sally looks simultaneously back at the past and into the future. The idea of ancestral wisdom comes back again in the final track, “The Fall”, an epic recounting of being visited by an ancestor in a dream. The song is full of lush, grounding piano, the driving tones enveloping the listener in the dreamworld of the narrator. “The earth is moving/Now you must too/Get to it/There’s so much to do/Rise up, rise up,” sings Sally, the urgency in her voice mirroring the music’s mounting dramatic undertones. This almost mystical call to action is a poignant end to what has been a soul-stirring journey, and as complex as our society has made our relationship to the Earth, it’s a story that cannot end in despair. As “The Fall” concludes with an uplifting gust of strings and brass, ANATOMY leaves us not with a sense of impending doom, but a reinvigorated mandate to search for answers within ourselves. “I don’t think there is, at the moment, a more urgent theme to tackle, poetically or lyrically, than the fate of the earth itself for future generations,” says Sally. But these songs are not about making people feel guilty, or afraid—but rather, calling us to wake up to where we are, look each other in the eye, grieve together for what's already lost and somehow find the ground on which we can start to be hopeful.”

Sally Potter has been composing music for her films since her Oscar-nominated ORLANDO in 1992. PINK BIKINI is her first studio album, a semi-autobiographical collection of songs about growing up female in London in the 1960s, as a young rebel and activist.