Hopelessness
by Anohni
Secretly Canadian Records
THE ARTIST formerly known as Antony Hegarty, best-known as the vocalist behind Antony and the Johnsons, now goes by the name Anohni. Earlier this year, the English-born singer told The New York Times that the new appellation was a return to her “spirit name,” which she has used among friends for years. The metamorphosis appears complete, for now.
Heretofore, Hegarty was notable in the indie-rock realm as an eccentric singer with a haunting and hard-to-define kind of musicality. Her group’s 2005 album I Am a Bird Now was the band’s biggest success, aided by guest vocals from Boy George, Björk, and the late Lou Reed. Prior to Antony’s transformation into Anohni, she was hardly a stranger to provocation. Songs like “Hitler in My Heart” and “Epilepsy is Dancing,” from her years with the Johnsons, were powered by astounding vocals but lacking in melody. You are not a real music critic until you have taken at stab at describing Anohni’s perfectly calibrated voice and vibrato. The breathy sibilance belies a traditionally masculine sound; the result is angelic in its androgyny.
In addition to the name- and gender-change, Anohni has radically altered her musical style on her solo album Hopelessness. Goodbye gloomy chamber rock, hello electronica. The new album contains eleven songs on nakedly political topics. It opens with “Drone Bomb Me,” sung from the perspective of a Middle Eastern child who perversely sees American bombs as manna from heaven. Other track titles include “Obama” (she’s not a fan), “Execution” (she’s definitely not a fan), and “Violent Men” (ditto). In her indictment of capital punishment, she sings: “Execution, it’s an American Dream. … If Europe takes it away, inject me with something else.” But she doesn’t stop there. Two songs, “Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth?” and “4 Degrees” (the caps add a special urgency) take an ecological turn. They extend the focus of Anohni’s “Manta Ray,” which she co-wrote for the environmentalist documentary Racing Extinction and for which she received an Oscar nomination in 2016 for best original song. In an eloquent open letter, Anohni explained her reason for not attending the awards ceremony as due to the Academy’s flashy commercialism, greed, and what she suspected was its resistance to putting its first transgender nominee front-and-center on Hollywood’s biggest stage.
For Hopelessness, she recruited a pack of A-list producers to integrate spooky synthesizers and sub-bass lines: there’s Scotsman Hudson Mohawke, who has created tracks for Kanye West, and Oneohtrix Point Never, a master of enraged electronica. There’s enough on the album to keep a Freudian thinker busy for many years to come. The freaky refrain in “Watch Me” is addressed to “Daddy”: “Watch me in hotel room, watching pornography. … I know you love me/ ’Cause you’re always watching me.” This Orwellian figure is less a loving protector than a superego exerting its strict control over our drives and desires. Hopelessness draws psychodrama and global politics into close alliance. The result is a wake-up call, renewing the power of rock music to shine a light and shock at the same time. These days, people, names, and genders are increasingly mutable, but thinking about the enduring power of the protest album, some things never change.
Colin Carman teaches British and American literature at Colorado Mesa University.
