6. ANOHNI - Hopelessness

ANOHNI, formerly known as Antony Hegarty of the chamber pop band Antony and the Johnsons, has stepped out of the spotlight for a change of gender as well as a change of musical style. The long-awaited protest-dance-album HOPELESSNESS (uhr what's with all these caps) finally arrived this year, and it's exactly what I hoped it would be: ANOHNI's amazing angel voice flaming over angry protest songs about ecocide, drone warfare, surveillance, Guantanamo, and other things that are wrong with the world today. It's not always a pleasant listen, but it's not supposed to be.

Hmm. The face shifts and distorts, I get it, but I'm not sure how much I like this
cover. Bad font, the idea isn't really that well executed.

The choppy, dramatic electronics are a dramatic change of frame from the orchestral elegance of Antony and the Johnsons, but very often it works very well. "4 degrees" was the first single, a furious, thundering lash against climate change deniers, sung from the angle of an evil capitalist longing to see the world boil, the animals die in the trees, the rhinos lie and cry in the fields. It's a brutal, terrifying song, cleverly highlighting the ethical crime of ignoring or trivializing climate change, and still catchy enough to make me holler the terrifying lyrics in the streets. It gave me massive expectations for the album, and when the main riff on opening track "Drone bomb me" finally entered after 1:23, I knew ANOHNI had delivered. The lyrics are another degree of vulgar, this time sung from the point of view of a war victim longing to be killed by the next drone bomb from the sky. "Blow my head off, explode my crystal guts, lay my purple on the grass" - you can only sing something like that when you're really, really angry.

All the songs are furious, so beyond angry that the sentiments cross over to heartbroken, betrayed, and that feeling of hopelessness. Only when the lyrics weirdly start listing countries does ANOHNI's spell break, and it happens twice actually, both when listing countries with death penalty  ("Execution", it's an American dream!) and when singing about globalization and the cancer of American culture ("Marrow"). Some countries are weirdly repeated across the album and others not, some aren't even countries. Here I start looking at her extreme music from the outside, unapprovingly, rather than swirl around inside it. Also on "Obama", where she sings a raging criticism of Obama's presidency and the hope he raised in us which he apparently betrayed, feels uncalled for and out of touch, despite the very important critiques of drone attacks and punishing whistleblowers.

Otherwise, musically, the songs pack the biggest punch when the pace picks up. "Watch me" and  "Why did you separate me from the earth?" both sound fantastic over Hudson Mohawke (over Kanye-producing fame) and Oneohtrix Point Never's chopped beats and exciting synths. It's a great collaborative effort, both producers adding beauty and punch to the album but never getting in ANOHNI's way, rather lifting her ideas to higher, more ecstatic levels. Of the more somber tracks, "Crisis" is the biggest success, its jarring, repetitive beauty sent my mind to a strange post-apocalyptic world while walking home in a snowstorm one night.

The HOPELESSNESS songs have been performed live with huge, strangely made-up
faces on screen, while a small, dimly lit ANOHNI sings.

HOPELESSNESS isn't without its mistakes, and I guess when you're as angry as ANOHNI is here you don't always think clearly. Still, it's a powerful album, which despite its hellish themes is both fun and inviting for a relisten. The music here is so good that I'd like it even stripping the lyrical contents away, and ANOHNI singing oohs and aahs for half an hour over the beats. But the uncomfortable juxtaposition of themes and sounds is what really lifts this album. As opposed to during the comfortable Antony & the Johnsons period, this time I'm really looking forward to seeing what ANOHNI does next.

Best tracks: "4 degrees", "Why did you separate me from the earth?", "Crisis", "Drone bomb me"