Anna's Anchor - 'Nautical Miles' Artwork Feature

Anna's Anchor is set to release new album Nautical Miles on September 23rd via Struggle Town and Never Meant Records. He recently shared a behind the scenes view of his video for "Signal Tower", a behind the scenes view of his video for "Hampton", and a track by track for the album. Today he is sharing an artwork feature where he describes how he created the album artwork and what lengths he had to go to in order to get it just right. You can pre-order the album on 12" vinyl at Never Meant and Struggle Town. (See larger image at bottom.)

"A nautical mile is a little bit longer than a mile. I find that with everything I do, be it academically, work or music related, I always have to work a little harder to get where I want to,” explains Marty Ryan, the man, heart and soul behind the Limerick based indie-emo-punk act, of the title’s origin. ‘Nautical Miles’ certainly is befitting of a debut album title, for an artist who won’t let simple geography stand in the way of “writing and releasing as much music as possible.” Laying down Nautical Miles saw Marty spend all of January 2016 criss-crossing the Irish Sea for studio sessions with producer Bob Cooper. Marty enlisted his pal Brian Scally to lay down drums, before handling all other instrumentation and vocals himself. The fruit of his labour is a soulful amalgam of emo, indie and pop, reminiscent of Jimmy Eat World and Into It. Over It. In support of the album’s release on 23rd September, Marty is pleased to talk more in depth about it’s artwork and the huge lengths he went to to achieve the cover…

The artwork was an idea I had before even going into the studio to record the album. From the outset, I wanted the album to be really cohesive and one solid intertwined unit. This is much easier to do when there's only one member.

Since I knew the album title was going to be "Nautical Miles", of course I wanted to have it related to the sea. When I sat down and really thought about what the album meant as a whole, I felt that there was a real push and pull between about being where I had somewhat planned to be, but being very depressed about the circumstances that lead me there. There's a real contrast in that sense as the album tackles some really dark things for me such as depression and alcoholism within my family that divided it, yet there's this positive outlook because it has actually lead me to a good place. I also wanted it to be really striking/strong and Propaghandi's album Failed States was the influence I had in my head.  With that in mind I thought: where am I happiest and also least happy to be? As you can see from the photo, we represented this via an "office" which is where I'm not at my happiest, out to the sea, which is where I'm at my happiest.

When I had come to the idea that it was going to be this bizarre contrast of an office by the sea/beach, I went straight to my pal Oscar from Long Lost Designs who runs Never Meant Records and shares a similar passion for these hair brained ideas that I do. The weekend after we finished recording the album with Bob Cooper, I managed to get a retro computer screen from a skip at a nearby University, loaded the desk into the van and we headed for West Clare. It was an extremely stormy day, but it was the only the day both of us had time for it!

The location was funny because we first went to Lahinch beach, where as there were a lot of people around, I wussed out of it and we drove to another less touristy beach called Spanish Point. We had to drag the desk like 200 yards to the beach and that was an absolute nightmare. It was freezing conditions and raining but we got it done.

When we sat down in the van to look at it, the brightness of the sand didn't make it look that cool, so we tried Doolin, which is in the Burren. It has this crazy Limestone rock formation everywhere, which would negate the issue of the colour of the sand. When we got to Doolin, the pier had been dug up by a storm the weekend beforehand and we had to park like 400 metres away from the spot because the carpark was covered in boulders that the sea had spat out days earlier. Dragging the desk that length nearly killed us but it looked amazing. The waves were crashing up onto my back as it neared high tide!

I should also point out, the days leading up to this shoot, I was very sick. I had a misdiagnosed throat infection which lead to the mother of all sinus infections. A few days after this shoot I wound up in hospital with them telling me I had pneumonia at some point over the last week - so I'm sure getting battered by the waves in just a shirt didn't help that! All in all, I think it's a striking powerful image that has a real strong connection with what the album is about so I couldn't be happier with it!"