When I saw a picture of her and watched the video for ‘Terry’, the first track of her self-titled debut album released on Stones Throw, I immediately thought….Nico?
Anika even has a German mother (Nico was German), and her monochord cold tone may remind you the Velvet Underground singer's.
The black and white video is really bleak and creepy at the beginning, with dark beats resonating in this tunnel, then comes this sunny infectious melody she sings over the darkness, as if she was covering a girl-group’s song of the 60s with post-punk emotionless vocals.
The song, which is actually a cover of 60s English singer-songwriter Lynn Ripley/Twinkle’s song, is about a motorcyclist boyfriend who died, and she asks him to wait for her at the gate of heaven, and that’s why the song sounded so familiar at first, familiar under its dark sonic veil.
Her album is mostly made of covers (Yoko Ono's ‘Yang Yang’, Ray Davies' ‘I Go to Sleep’ and even a dub version of Bob Dylan's ‘Masters of War’) and was produced by Geoff Barrow of Portishead and BEAK