ANNA CALVI - PEAKY BLINDERS: SEASON 5 AND 6 (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Released: 26/01/24

I’m going to be honest, I ducked out of the BBC Brummie crime drama Peaky Blinders around season three, having got to the point where the ultra-violent machinations of Tommy Shelby and co. were just getting a bit much (yes, I’m a sensitive flower – I stopped watching The Sopranos for much the same reason). Which is a shame, for as a Leicesterite I tend to lap up stories that focus on the Midlands, scarce as they are (in case you’re wondering – and, granted, why would you? – the only TV show to be set in my home city is The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾). 

Anyway, my aversion to brutally graphic face stabbings is also my loss, as the Cillian Murphy-led show is brilliant – not least in the absolute truck-load of ridiculously good needle drops it contains, including ‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division’, PJ Harvey’s ‘This is Love’, and Black Sabbath’s ‘The Wizard’ – and let’s not forget the theme tune: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’. Perhaps most excitingly, though, was the news that Anna Calvi was going to compose music for the last two seasons of Peaky Blinders, for, as I’ve said multiple times before in these fair pages, there’s something about the rigour and focus of writing for the screen that brings out something in artists, often with the result that it’s the best work in their oeuvre (see Mica Levi and The Haxan Cloak’s work for Under the Skin and Midsommer, respectively). With Anna Calvi, my theory has been reinforced once again, for the songs on Peaky Blinders: Season 5 & 6 (Original Score), such as the righteously heavy ‘Miquelon’, and the absolute jammer ‘Ain’t No Grave’, which sees Calvin’s darkly gothic vocal shimmer across a track that sounds like Suicide crossed with The Birthday party, are truly some of the most remarkable of her career.