Bess Atwell – Cut A Figure

Acclaimed UK artist Bess Atwell announces her new album Cut A Figure, arriving February 5th via Nettwerk.

Atwell shares the latest single “Glass” alongside a brilliant new video and confirmation of full world tour dates in 2027.

For her follow-up to 2024’s Aaron Dessner-produced album Light Sleeper, Bess Atwell retreated from the UK to Quebec, where she lived for nine months, conceiving and writing what would become Cut a Figure. To bring the album to life, she worked with Los Angeles-based producer and mixer Chris Coady (Beach House, Future Islands, DIIV, Foals, and more). The result is a record that feels kinetic, confident, and fully realized. “Glass” is the emotional heart of this new record, and its lyrics even inspired the album’s title. “Glass” pairs crystalline vocals with cathartic indie pop arrangements with lyrics exploring how an eagerness to be understood can make someone invisible.

Bess explains, “I knew I wanted to name the album after a line in this song as it feels like the heart of the record. Sometimes, an eagerness to be seen and understood can have the opposite effect – you can be so transparent that you end up invisible. When I was a teenager, I was really into doing ‘personality tests’. One test had you imagine a cube and then describe it (the cube supposedly representing how you express yourself). All my friends and family pictured various different sizes and colors, while I saw a transparent glass box floating in space.”

Sometimes we have to leave what we know behind, in order to find ourselves. For British artist Bess Atwell, a spontaneous move to Canada – where she lived for nine months – proved the catalyst for one of her most vividly realised, honest albums to date. Cut a Figure, her fourth record, doesn’t just trace the outlines; it digs deep, as Atwell analyses a lifetime’s worth of relationships, decisions and motivations.

To make such an album, she had to abandon some of the creative processes that had become second-nature. “The songs I really enjoyed performing from my last record were the rare moments where I put down any instruments, and it was just me singing to my audience, which can be a bit scary,” she says, referring to 2024’s Aaron Dessner-produced Light Sleeper. “But those were the songs that seemed to connect the most, and where I felt most free to actually live with the song and what it was about.”

Cut a Figure was produced by industry heavyweight Chris Coady (Beach House, Foals, Slowdive) at Coady’s Glendale, California studio. The album marks a significant evolution in Atwell’s celebrated songwriting. Long known for her astonishing emotional acuity, Atwell shifts the magnifying glass onto herself for this record, exploring how her relationship with her own emotions; most crucially, anger, has transformed over time.

Channeling repressed feelings that had previously manifested as extreme anxiety, Cut a Figure serves as a cathartic outlet for Atwell to confront toxic dynamics and reclaim her voice. The Eighties-leaning initial single, “The Act,” serves as a brilliantly moody “diss track” written during a period of health challenges, while the sweeping “Your Name” tackles the struggle of learning to stand up for oneself. Throughout the record, Atwell paints masterfully relatable scenes, whether addressing the desire to be truly seen on the sombre “Glass” or processing the aftermath of a broken relationship on the sweetly scathing “I Was a Mirror.”

Ultimately, the album is a powerful statement of self-acceptance and defiance. On the waltzing “Out for Eleven,” Atwell confronts the shame and misconceptions surrounding her experiences with panic attacks and agoraphobia. This journey toward healing culminates in the shimmering analogue synths of “Tonight I Am Allowed,” where her spellbinding voice pushes back against the masks society has forced her to wear. Shedding her people-pleasing tendencies, Atwell has delivered an extraordinary record that boldly embraces exactly who she is.

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