The Humanity of Dancing Shadows
It’s January 2026, the beginning of a whole new year, bursting with hopes, aspirations, desires and to be realistic, perpetual feelings of endless stress. Everything is heightened, survival mode fritzing and glitching. It’s been on high for so long, our bodies and minds desperately need a moment, no matter how brief, just to catch a breath, a smile, and a hug. We all need an Anna Phoebe live performance.
Before providing that salvation antidote, let’s momentarily skip back to 380 BC to hang out with one Greek philosopher Plato, who had just written the Allegory of the Cave. The premise of the story is the perception of life from people who have been chained inside a cave since birth, forced to face a bare wall with no ability to turn their heads, thus never having seen the outside world. They only saw the flickering shadows cast on the walls from a fire behind them, and others walking by, believing that to be reality. These misshapen forms created a myopic distorted reality that shaped their entire understanding of truth, life and meaning.
Then one day a prisoner escapes, leaving the cave into a painful disorienting light. They persevere through, emerging into the real world. After an initial confusion, their vision adjusts, they slowly realise what they once believed true, isn’t. They are free.
A great deal of modern media could be considered to be those flickering flames, presenting a distortion of the world around us, outside our cave of choice, be it our rooms, lives, screens, as we stare addicted, hypnotised into a state of constant dread and consumption.
It may seem a somewhat random intro to a live review, but walking down into The Lower Third on a damp, dark, rainy London night in January, it actually felt like we were descending into a cave, though a very beautiful one at that.
It has to be said the venue and particularly this basement venue is very lovely indeed. The street level on Denmark Street has a small bar that wouldn’t be out of place in St Mark’s in New York City. The staff are always incredibly nice, it’s cosy, intimate and has a small performance room where you can get close and personal with the artist of that eve.
The basement is bigger, but still has that intimacy, the warmth, a communal space that is absolutely perfect for tonight’s date on Anna’s DIVERGENCE Tour in support of her new album, which we’ve previously spoken about here.
It has echoes of a very cosy cave, protecting us from the elements and the dark, providing much needed shelter, warmth and dare I say, salvation.
I’ve mentioned it a few times how you can always spot the integrity of an artist by the standard of who they have supporting them, and it was a joy to see Helen Ganya play. A radiant blend of humanity, joy, whimsy, cultures, pop, play and Thai heritage mixed with Scottish attitude. Where multicultural aspects are only enhanced by their diversity and a very beautiful, immensely powerful voice. There’s only one artist on stage with a guitar and mixers, but the range of her abilities and downright groove are a wonderful remix of life itself. And she’s just so much fun.
Anna comes on to rapturous applause, from a crowd that ultimately becomes one of my favourite ever audiences given the truly appropriate respect, silent attention and cheers, joyous roars of delight, support after each track. This isn’t about blind reverence, this is about having seen the light, escaping the cave.
The analogy of said cave deepens further by the beautiful sparse lighting behind her on the small stage. Four small warm orange suns floating gently above spreading a warm blanket of light across the room, and casting dancing shadows on the wall, where multiple Anna shapes leap and frolic echoing her movements, as if she’s sending out messengers of calm to soothe the world, but first everyone in the room.
Anna is a master of mood navigation, birthing the low rumblings of Submerged. As if the venue is now a submarine coming up from the depths from a very long journey, in the hope of discovering new lands. It is utterly captivating, brooding, such immense power, noise, distortion, slowly becoming form, beauty, energy, magic.
The tempo builds over the set, as does the exploration of storytelling and sound itself. Field recordings of voices and nature are introduced via samples and cassette tapes, where organic, tangible, raw aspects of life are let flourish, like rewilding our minds with natural beauty. Sowing seeds of hearing and seeing things differently. Technically Anna is a violinist, but there is zero doubt she’s an artist and storyteller first, sound is the paint she uses.
In the most glorious way possible, and in no way mimicking, I feel aspects of South London producer Burial being woven into what is happening in front of me. I’m biased in my affection for the DIVERGENCE album, but these super textured, layered, gritty, raw and dare I say gorgeously messy versions feel so incredibly organic and true, that I genuinely start to feel that we are experiencing that piercing the veil sequence in Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners. If you haven’t seen the film (absolutely DO!!!), but effectively the power of music slices open the barrier to time, everything is one, as it should be. There’s even the reverential, what feels like sombre deep church organ notes to heighten the rapture. And murmurings of Vangelis’ Blade Runner score, probably the greatest film soundtrack ever.
I am utterly transfixed, I am weeping, I am unbelievably happy.
It’s as though Anna through the alchemy of sound has forged a fragile yet powerful time capsule representing all of humanity, across time, lands and cultures and flawlessly merged them together, designed to last no longer than that moment itself. This moment now, that we are all watching, experiencing, loving. As she invites us to focus on sounds and feelings we might normally ignore, unbeknownst to ourselves, or painfully deliberately.
There are a number of tracks later in the set that have the extra layers of drums and cello, starting with Untamed, and including Wear the Rose that raise the spirits even higher into the outer stratosphere, where the power and euphoria genuinely feel unbridled, in the best way possible. This is what being alive is about, the removal of the space between artist and audience, there is only We now.
As We come to a close, the set is beautifully bookended with By the Sea, Anna’s first ever solo track. The lapping waves that have drifted in throughout the evening bring a contemplative moment of gentle stillness, an afterglow, murmurings of a journey. From beautiful beginnings, feeling like we’re in a Mediterranean cave, to the tranquillity of sitting on the warm sand, where we draw circles that represent the complete circle of time we’ve just shared.
We emerge from the cave reborn.
We smile, we hug.
DIVERGENCE by Anna Phoebe is out now, more information and UK tour details can be found here.