Anna Butterss Returns to Mighty Vertebrate With “Ninths” Outtake

Anna Butterss has spent the last few years moving between high-profile sessions and LA’s improvised music circles, but solo work remains a separate kind of focus. Their 2024 album Mighty Vertebrate brought together SML bandmates Josh Johnson on saxophone, Gregory Uhlmann on guitar, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine. Now International Anthem is issuing an outtake from those sessions, “Ninths,” alongside a skull-colored vinyl reissue of the record.

The track opens with Uhlmann in a spindly, post-punk guitar pattern that recurs throughout. Johnson’s saxophone eventually moves to the center, carrying a moody, hypnotic line without flattening the piece’s blustery momentum. It feels less like a leftover than a different angle on the album’s logic — loose, patient, but still locked into the group’s internal clock.

Butterss keeps a long list of affiliations — Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, Makaya McCraven, Jason Isbell, boygenius, Neko Case, Flea — but “Ninths” is a reminder that their own records are built on specific, trusted collaborators rather than marquee names.