“I try to score Tommy Shelby’s inner voice with my guitar. I’d play with a bow or hit the strings with the guitar on the ground, all sorts of weird stuff”: How Anna Calvi threw out the guitar rulebook to write the Peaky Blinders score

Anna Calvi, live onstage in Italy with her Telecaster.

For most guitar players, composing music is a means for self-expression that often can provide the deepest and most profound insight into their hearts, minds and souls. The same can also be said of Anna Calvi’s three solo albums, though by the London-based songwriter’s own admission it was a somewhat different approach for her original score for Peaky Blinders seasons 5 and 6, released on CD and vinyl at the beginning of this year.

In these creative situations, she reasons, it’s not her own story being told, but rather that of the characters depicted on screen, so her primary objective is to join the dots between what people see and what they hear.