
ANNA CALVI
Peaky Blinders: Season 5 & 6 (Original Score) (Domino)
Anna Calvi is back in Birmingham, this time composing the original score to Season 5 and 6 of Peaky Blinders. Calvi, a virtuoso guitarist, had composed for the beloved series before, but this double album feels completely hers. The Season 5 score takes us on the emotive ups and downs of the series’ main character, Tommy Shelby.
Sometimes haunting and overwhelming, always powerful and affecting, Calvi brings Shelby’s life before our eyes purely with her sound. Impressively, she plays all of the instruments on the season 5 soundtrack – including ones she was less comfortable with, namely violin, piano and percussion – the results are unforgettable and the rawness is completely intended.
For season 6, meanwhile, Calvi invited her old producer Nick Launey and other musicians to work with her, looking for, in her words, “a new musical voice for Tommy”. In a recent 6 Music interview, Calvi said she thinks of her singing voice as the soft, beautiful narrator of Shelby’s life and of her guitar as the voice of its anger and ugliness: a perfect musical translation of the show’s duality.
words GOSIA BUZZANCA