My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI’s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.

On her first full album since 2016’s HOPELESSNESS, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. “Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago.”

ANOHNI’s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. “I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief.

On “It Must Change,”ANOHNI soulfully describes systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: “The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way // That’s why this is so sad.” ANOHNI’s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. “We’re not getting out of here // No one’s getting out of here // This is our world,” she murmurs.

A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work.
Elsewhere, the album artwork states ”IT’S TIME TO FEEL WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING”. In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life’s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, with the maturity of a painter carefully choosing her colors. “I want the work to be useful, to help others move through these conversations we are now facing, to move with dignity and resilience through this bitter dawning.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. It Must Change
2. Go Ahead
3. Sliver Of Ice
4. Can’t
5. Scapegoat
6. It’s My Fault
7. Rest
8. There Wasn’t Enough
9. Why Am I Alive Now
10. You Be Free

The songs mark Anohni’s first new music since the 2019 charity single ‘Karma’, a collaboration with Jade Bell and J. Ralph.

A viscous embrace, a pulsating pouring out, Anohni’s voice is above all else a vessel for political armament. On 2016’s Hopelessness, her voice bombarded with explicit illustration of Obama-era atrocities -- of war crimes, of apocalyptic climate change, of patriarchal violence. Now sharing a dual cover set, she casts a subtler, but no less powerful incantation towards change.

The original tracks dating to 1965, a year marked by the Selma marches, the Watts Rebellion, and the landmark Voting Rights Act, illuminate the eerily parallel struggles of this year. Anohni’s rendition of ‘It’s All Over Now…’ reads as a hopeful, future goodbye to times dominated by oppression. With ‘Be My Husband,” textually woven with marital submission and want for acceptance, she examines our reliance on the very systems that fail us.

In borrowing these songs, Anohni adopts their history along with her contemporary interpretations, respecting the lineage of the people’s movement while calling for its continuance today. “When Biden said ‘Americans don’t want revolution, they want a return to decency,’ he was wrong,” she explained. “We all know deep down that the continuation of our civilizations for much longer will require seismic change.”

TRACK LISTING

1. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
2. Be My Husband

In collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, on “PARADISE,” ANOHNI seeks to support activist conversations and disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.

“PARADISE” includes new songs as well as material recently debuted live. On the title track, “Paradise,” Anohni voices ecstatic alienation, describing a dystopian life filled with horror, awe, comfort and threat. She expresses a sense of disembodiment: "Myself, I'm here... not here, as a point of consciousness." The music is wild and invigorating with a heavy beat conceived by Hudson Mohawke and twisting vocal treatments by Daniel Lopatin.

Nine portraits of women on the EP artwork reflect the feminine oracle that ANOHNI evoked in her live concert tour.

TRACK LISTING

1. In My Dreams
2. Paradise
3. Jesus Will Kill You
4. Enemy
5. Ricochet
6. She Doesn’t Mourn Her Loss

“Anohni has arrived at the high table of electronic nowness. She has moved from the lush pastoral piano modern compositional landscape framing her voice into a more immediate world of dance-mutated electronica... Was pop ever so revelatory or so profound?” - Geoff Travis, London 2016

Anohni, the singer of Antony And The Johnsons, releases her new album, ‘Hopelessness’, on Rough Trade. A collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, ‘Hopelessness’ is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing subjects including surveillance, drone warfare and ecocide. The album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.

To coincide with the Climate Conference in Paris last December, Anohni released her debut single, ‘4 Degrees’ and The Guardian called it “Hugely affecting… instantly earns its place in the pantheon of great musical protests.”

‘Drone Bomb Me’ is the beautiful yet brutal second single from ‘Hopelessness’. As described by Anohni, “‘Drone Bomb Me’ is a love song written from the perspective of a young girl in Afghanistan whose family has been executed by unmanned US drones. She dreams of being annihilated.” The powerful video for ‘Drone Bomb Me’ was directed by Nabil and features an astonishing performance by Naomi Campbell.

“‘Hopelessness is the genius of Anohni and her masterful songwriting. The long low sexy beats, the skittering colorful and playful rhythms surround her voice, which is the silky center… ‘Hopelessness’ is an entirely new mix of love and power, sex and despair delivered with her heavenly voice and incantatory melodies.” - Laurie Anderson, NYC 2016

“Once, some time ago, Anohni, who sings so exquisitely on this new record which is really about defiance and naming names-the name you want to be called, your birthright-was known as Antony but it didn’t measure up to what was felt inside, and it is my belief that Anohni’s voice would have closed up if Anohni had stayed Antony and the words would have stopped, too, because the naming was not as accurate as Anohni’s soul required to sing what needed to be sung... The record is fierce-fierce in its desire to breathe and be heard.” - Hilton Als, NYC 2016