It’s been an elusive decade for German-British artist Anika, who made her name back in 2010 with her terrific self-titled debut album, a record of icy, eerie covers that found a way to make 60s and 70s standards speak with a voice of unease and anomie. The last few years have seen her return to music fronting the band Exploded View, but now she’s finally back in her solo guise with the single Finger Pies. After the debut and Exploded View, the song marks a new stylistic chapter for her. Finger Pies has a motorik looping momentum and rhythm, paired with experimentalism’s wandering notes, and locks into a groove that sets the tone for the song’s dreamy, hypnotic world. Her lyrics here are almost subliminal, a murmur gently carried along by the song’s sway, enigmatic, open to many layers and angles of potential meaning, but still keeping their secrets to themselves. More new music is due from Anika later this year, and in that sense that Finger Pies has done the job of an opening single perfectly – it’s an intriguing, fascinating song that leaves you wanting more. Anika says: “A song that never had a name, like an artist that never had a face. Caught between roles, a jack of all trades, she slips between your fingers like a moment that never was, or was it? So many faces tailored to a myriad of occasions. Walls built between ourselves and the outside world. For protection. Passes grant access to another level. So where are you at? Those with all the keys, please remember, access comes with responsibility. Yet responsibility has been lost, like tissue paper in the rain, a battle without rules, to save face, exploit weakness, to save getting slayed, by the faceless generation. Welcome to the world of Finger Pies.”