First full UK tour for Berlin-based singer-songwriter Anna Erhard

“I was actually in the UK for three concerts in the spring and they went really, really well.” Anna says. “I was really surprised how well they went. I was surprised anyone turned up at all! I had a London show which was really nice and then I was at the Great Escape which was great.”

It resulted in heavy airplay from the likes of Steve Lamacq who featured Anna in his TGE highlights and also in his recent New Music Fix Friday selection) and also from Don Letts, Chris Hawkins, Lauren Laverne, Huw Stephens, Deb Grant, and several Radio X X-Posure Playlist additions.

And now, as the new dates approach, Anna has released a new single – 170, an off-the-wall, slice of adventurous indie/art-pop and the first-brand new music to emerge from the Swiss-born artist since her 2022 album Campsite on which Anna recited a series of campsite memories in a voice that sounds like how you feel when awakened by the morning sun after a great but short night in a tent.

The new single reflects her playful approach to making music: “My friend and I had a serious argument about how tall we are. I am obviously taller than her and I wrote this song to make her publicly admit that she was wrong when she said that I am not 170 (5’7’’). I’m 170 and she is shorter than me!”

Campsite came out almost exactly a year ago, and her first album a year before that: “The overall topic was obviously campsite which feeds into the UK where we had a family holiday. In the UK we would drive around. We had a tent with us and we even camped in London. I just really loved camping. It was quite a fancy tent, and I just loved that feeling that you have that there's just a thin wall between you and the world outside. And I loved the people that would stay on campsites. They were really fun. There would be a lot of regulars there and they just make the campsite their home which is great.

“It's about memories. I wrote it during the pandemic when we were stuck inside our walls and couldn't go out. The memories started coming back.

“I released my first album right into the first few months of the pandemic which was a bit disappointing. At the beginning I was like ‘Oh I don't have to do all these things’, but after a few weeks it wasn't great. But I was lucky to have a friend producing both my albums and he has this beautiful little studio and he was all ‘Let’s not just give up!’ And we would meet every week and just jam and for me that was a new way of doing things. And now I'm recording again. I've just released the single and I've got some other songs that are in the making. For me it's about a playful way of approaching the music, as a way to just experiment and play and find my sound and then obviously find the lyrics. The first album I did was the more normal way of song-writing but the second one I used drum machines and synthesisers and I was just experimenting more, just wanting to see what would happen.”