Anna Calvi and Matt Berninger – Is This All There Is?
Anna Calvi has been building toward something for a while. After scoring the final two seasons of Peaky Blinders and composing an opera with Robert Wilson, she returns with “Is This All There Is?”, a four-song EP of duets due March 20 on Domino. Her collaborators — Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson, Perfume Genius, and The National’s Matt Berninger — aren’t random features. “They share a kind of subversive honesty”, Calvi says. “They’re not trying to please anyone. They express exactly who they are”. The title track, shared today, is her song with Berninger.
Calvi originally wrote “Is This All There Is?” for Joanna Hogg’s 2021 film “The Souvenir Part II”, where it went unreleased. She rebuilt it as a duet, and the contrast between her voice and Berninger’s is exactly the point — her delivery tightly controlled, his carrying the weight of something older and more worn. Synth-rock in structure, but with enough space that the two voices feel like they’re searching independently rather than performing together. “We’re both searching for answers — together and yet somehow always apart, which I find beautiful”, Calvi says. “He brings an intimacy to the song that I couldn’t have imagined”. What catches me is how that separation holds up musically — the arrangement keeps them distinct even when they’re singing the same line, which mirrors the lyric precisely.
The EP sits at the start of a planned trilogy exploring identity and transformation, prompted by Calvi’s experience of becoming a parent. This first instalment asks the existential questions — about intimacy, connection, what it means to feel present. “This song is about the bravery it takes to hope”, she says. “It’s the willingness to ask questions, even when knowing you’ll never get a definitive answer”. Berninger’s voice suits that register: the refrain lands differently depending on who’s carrying it.
“Is This All There Is?” uses its collaborators well — this isn’t a feature for profile, it’s a song that needed two voices to work, and it does. A strong case for an EP that looks set to be one of the year’s more quietly ambitious releases.
Tour Dates Europe:
- 18 March — London, UK — Barbican (Marianne Faithfull tribute)
- 23 May — Spain — Deleste Festival
- 18 July — Halifax, UK — The Piece Hall (w/ David Byrne)
- 26 July — Cardiff, UK — Cardiff Castle (w/ David Byrne)
- 23 August — Wales — Green Man Festival
