Anna Butterss: the outtake earns its place
Mighty Vertebrate returns on skull-colored vinyl with 'Ninths', a session outtake where Gregory Uhlmann's guitar hands the piece over to Josh Johnson's saxophone.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 12 2026 · 3 min read'Ninths' is an outtake that doesn't act like one. Anna Butterss excluded it from Mighty Vertebrate, her second solo album, and International Anthem released it on September 11 alongside a skull-colored repress of the record. It begins with Gregory Uhlmann picking a spindly figure in post-punk mode, and then the piece shifts: Josh Johnson's alto saxophone takes over and becomes its center. Guitar states something, the horn responds. That is the band's method in miniature.
Butterss is a bassist and composer from Adelaide, currently based in Los Angeles. Mighty Vertebrate is her second solo album under her own name, following Activities in 2022, with Lados B arriving in 2023, and it came out on International Anthem on 4 October 2024. The band on it is the point: Josh Johnson on alto saxophone and effects and Gregory Uhlmann on guitar and effects, both her bandmates in SML, plus drummer Ben Lumsdaine, with Jeff Parker's guitar reserved for one track.
She wrote every part and brought it to life alongside Lumsdaine, who handled mixing too. The credits she doesn't appear on reveal how the record was assembled: Lumsdaine once more on drums, percussion, lap steel and drum programming, Chris Schlarb tracking, David Allen mastering, John Herndon contributing artwork, Scott McNiece arranging the sequence. What Butterss performs herself amounts to almost a full studio's setup: acoustic bass, electric bass, guitar, synth, flute, drum machine. No one listed on the sleeve provides vocals.
That provides the palette before you get to the songs: two guitars plus an alto saxophone in front, bass below, drums and percussion in back, with synth, flute, lap steel, and drum machine used where the arrangements call for them. 'Bishop' starts the record, and 'Dance Steve' is the sole cut with a guest, Parker's guitar coming in alongside Uhlmann's. Johnson's saxophone goes through effects, Uhlmann's guitar as well, and that pairing is where the album places its weight.
'Pokemans' has a video. 'Ella' is the shortest track here. 'Saturno' ends the record at 5:26, the longest on it, and the one left holding the ending. 'Ninths' is the clearest window into how the four of them work: the guitar starts the argument, the saxophone finishes it, and the composed weight moves forward through the band instead of pooling under the name on the sleeve.
Purchase it if you track this band's other releases, if International Anthem's catalog occupies your shelves, or if you play bass and want to hear one carry an album without stepping into the spotlight. It rewards headphones and repeated listens more than it rewards a crowded room. If you're hoping for a chorus, none is on the way. If you want a record where the band itself is the instrument, that's the entire proposition.
Two caveats. 'Ninths' is a single motion: figure, handoff, exit. As outtakes go it's a companion piece, and it carries that lightly, yet it isn't a second chapter. The larger one concerns the package. A skull-colored pressing of a two-year-old album is merch, and the motive to buy Mighty Vertebrate again is one unreleased track, not the disc's color. The record didn't require an occasion. The label manufactured one.
Yet Mighty Vertebrate remains what it has always been: ten tracks, one guest, a composer playing much of the studio while still giving the spotlight to the horns. That’s a 4.0, and 'Ninths' deserves to stand alongside it.
