THE voice is the same, but Anna Coddington’s new album Cat & Bird is a different beast than her last one.
Coddington’s first full-length album The Lake, released in 2008, was an exercise in soul-baring. “Songwriting [for The Lake] felt like working from the inside out, conveying personal experiences.
This time I took it from all different angles; some of the tunes I just wanted to get a mood or a feeling across, others are more of a story.”
Underneath the stars is dedicated to a feeling. “I wanted the verses to feel spacious and airy, and the chorus to be more for raising your hands in the air and having a good time.” Title track Cat & Bird tells the story of an unlikely love affair between feline and avian.


Coddington laughingly refers to herself as a self-taught “hack” (defined online as ‘an untalented professional’); but that didn’t stop her from arranging much of the album.
“The last album was like, ‘here are the songs, now you guys play what you think is good’. This time I put a year into getting the arrangements exactly how I wanted; even doing some of the drum and bass parts myself in a rudimentary fashion, to be done more excellently by my band later.”
Coddington also took on production of the album, although she shared that role with her partner and fellow musician, Ned Ngatae.
Mixing business and pleasure had its moments.
“Sometimes it’s hard, when you’ve been working on a part for three hours and then they say it’s not working. It either makes you want to concede or it makes you more sure that it’s how you want it; both are good things. I had to take a non-emotional approach to it; he’s not just my boyfriend he’s a really talented musician giving me a musical opinion.”
Two years after starting the album, Coddington is still very excited about it. “I was very conscious of not overdoing things, telling myself that when something’s good it’s good, and you need to leave it there and move on. I was determined through the whole process that by the end of it I would still love it, and I do.”
Cat & Bird Album Release, Mighty Mighty, March 10.