Anna Calvi took a five-year break after releasing 2013's One Breath, but the intervening time didn't diminish the grand sound she's been cultivating since her debut. From the title track's breathy opening to the soaring melody of "Away," her gift for elucidating the drama of a bygone era is intact and just as effective. If anything, the lustily provocative nature of her artistry reaches its dizzy apex on Hunter.
She takes the drama of '80s power ballads and extracts its most gothic textures, no doubt aided by Nicolas Launay's (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) expansive production, which recalls the airiness he gave the Bad Seeds' Push the Sky Away. A great deal of the record explores the fluidity of gender by playing with many of the common tropes associated with masculinity, from "Alpha" to "Hunter." The former track's arch, elongated riffs, and the predatory prowl of "Indies or Paradise," include some of Calvi's most warped and consummate shredding to date, further dispelling another macho myth -- that only boys can play guitar. Nevertheless, these virile expressions never come at the expense of Calvi's femininity, as the lush swirl of "Swimming Pool" attests.
Like gender, the record also examines sexuality. Calvi has flirted with a queer point of view before, as on "I'll Be Your Man" from her 2011 debut. But Hunter is the record which fundamentally lives and breathes queerness, a record where on "Chains" she suggests, "I'll be the boy, you be the girl/I'll be the girl you be the boy." Unlike earlier efforts, this feels less like theater for theater's sake, and ultimately, unbridled and infinitely real. On "Wish," for instance, she's never sounded so liberated, and that lack of constraint bleeds into her guitar playing, hinting at a newfound joy amid the curious majesty of her music.
Hunter is the record where, more than any other, Calvi's talents have fully crystallized. The true character of her music has been unleashed and will likely see all those PJ Harvey comparisons finally fade, eclipsed by the radiance of this tough yet open-hearted work.