400 Unit Bassist Anna Butterss Details New Solo Album ‘Mighty Vertebrate’ & Shares Vibrant ‘Shorn’ Single

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit bassist Anna Butterss announced a new solo album, Mighty Vertebrate, due out on October 4 via International Anthem, their first release on the label. Butterss previewed the new record with the single “Shorn.”

Anna began work on Mighty Vertebrate in 2022, finding time to write and record the album amidst her busy schedule as an in-demand player.

“I had just gotten off of a bunch of touring at the end of 2022 and just wanted to write music,” Butterss said. “The best way for me to do that, I’ve found, is to set myself a discrete and focused task.”

Anna created a series of prompts to focus their creation. Check some of them out below:

I’m going to make a song where the bass doesn’t function in the role of a bass.

I’m going to work on this for an hour and then I’m going to stop.

I’m going to make a song that uses groups of three-bar phrasing.

I want to sample something and make it into a song.

I’m going to start with a drum machine.

“Every song was like that,” Butterss added. “Then once I got started I just followed where my mind wanted to go. It was very structured.”

Butterss worked with co-producer and contributor Ben Lumsdaine on Mighty Vertebrate. The album artwork was created by Tortoise’s John Herndon.

For full-band tracking, Butterss and Lumsdaine brought their work to Chris Schlarb’s Long Beach studio BIG EGO where Anna teamed with their bandmates in Los Angeles supergroup SML guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and saxophonist Josh Johnson to flesh out the record. Another collaborator, Jeff Parker, added guitar to the track “Dance Steve.”

Press materials for Mighty Vertebrate described the lead single “Shorn” as “a sly, slow-building poly-rhythm of drum machine, bass, staccato guitar, and organic percussion that hits immediately with an ever-ascending sax theme and lush tremolo guitars.”

Listen to “Shorn” below:

Mighty Vertebrate Tracklist:

1. Shorn
2. Dance Steve (feat. Jeff Parker)
3. Ella
4. Lubbock
5. Pokemans
6. Breadrich
7. Seeing You
8. Counter Point
9. Saturno