ANOHNI - Hopelessness
ANOHNI's HOPELESSNESS. This album is one of the year's best. Can we also say, one of its most important?
You have to be careful throwing around words like "important" when it comes to art because, well, you run the risk of damning the artist with the pretense of your hubristic ability to identify what "matters" aesthetically. But ANOHNI's is an album that defies time. It is a record deeply for, and of this age -- in its electronic aesthetic (produced in parts by avant-electro masters Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke), but also in its subject matter, which is relentlessly, subversively political. But as much as it is of this time, it's also utterly timeless vis a vis ANOHNI's singular voice, that ineffable beacon shining into the lineage of Arthur Russell and Nina Simone and untold operatic masters, yet a bright light entirely its own. (When you listen, you'll recognize the voice as identical to that of Antony Hegarty; the artist has transitioned, and she is now known as this all-capitalized name.)
About that "subversive" element: Beneath the sonic ingenuity of OPN and Hudson's production, ANOHNI is lyrically playing with pop-music's common tropes -- sexuality, love, and yearning -- and flipping them on their head to make bold, ironic statements about our relationship to this planet, and ourselves. It's a political album in the fullest, and one unlike any that's ever been made.
The theatrical avant-banger "Four Degrees" puts huge, resounding drums and sinister electro in service of ANOHNI's yearning -- to just crank up the global thermostat a bit, to hear the dogs crying for water, to see the animals dying in the trees ("it's only four degrees").
The glimmering opening track "Drone Bomb Me" is a come-hither come-on, a girl to her paramour -- but here the girl is in a battle-ravaged land targeted by the Western military, and the lover is a drone. ("Drone bomb me, blow me from the mountains and into the sea ... I want to be the apple of your eye... Let me be the first, I'm not so innocent... Let me be the one you choose from above..." all sung in the voice of one who recognizes a union that's fated, head over heels, literally and physically.
This stuff hits on so many levels. HOPELESSNESS is the album, and it's so good.
ANOHNI's HOPELESSNESS. This album is one of the year's best. Can we also say, one of its most important?
You have to be careful throwing around words like "important" when it comes to art because, well, you run the risk of damning the artist with the pretense of your hubristic ability to identify what "matters" aesthetically. But ANOHNI's is an album that defies time. It is a record deeply for, and of this age -- in its electronic aesthetic (produced in parts by avant-electro masters Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke), but also in its subject matter, which is relentlessly, subversively political. But as much as it is of this time, it's also utterly timeless vis a vis ANOHNI's singular voice, that ineffable beacon shining into the lineage of Arthur Russell and Nina Simone and untold operatic masters, yet a bright light entirely its own. (When you listen, you'll recognize the voice as identical to that of Antony Hegarty; the artist has transitioned, and she is now known as this all-capitalized name.)
About that "subversive" element: Beneath the sonic ingenuity of OPN and Hudson's production, ANOHNI is lyrically playing with pop-music's common tropes -- sexuality, love, and yearning -- and flipping them on their head to make bold, ironic statements about our relationship to this planet, and ourselves. It's a political album in the fullest, and one unlike any that's ever been made.
The theatrical avant-banger "Four Degrees" puts huge, resounding drums and sinister electro in service of ANOHNI's yearning -- to just crank up the global thermostat a bit, to hear the dogs crying for water, to see the animals dying in the trees ("it's only four degrees").
The glimmering opening track "Drone Bomb Me" is a come-hither come-on, a girl to her paramour -- but here the girl is in a battle-ravaged land targeted by the Western military, and the lover is a drone. ("Drone bomb me, blow me from the mountains and into the sea ... I want to be the apple of your eye... Let me be the first, I'm not so innocent... Let me be the one you choose from above..." all sung in the voice of one who recognizes a union that's fated, head over heels, literally and physically.
This stuff hits on so many levels. HOPELESSNESS is the album, and it's so good.
Comment