British artist Anohni has a biblical sense of the rights and wrongs of things. And Anohni and the Johnsons’ warm, empathetic sixth album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross – the band’s first record since Anohni announced her change of name and pronouns and released a solo album, 2016’s Hopelessness – retains that sense. Yet it reframes it in softer tones, graceful in its understanding and understated in its anger.
Hopelessness was crafted from wintery electronics. My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross was built differently, with words that had been percolating for years finding their way out over producer Jimmy Hogarth’s meandering guitar lines.
Together they have created a record of languid soul music and blues. Hopelessness reflected on the impossibility of the task of standing up against the systems that have broken the world: My Back… is a crutch on the way to creating change.
The astonishing “It Must Change” finds understanding and forgiveness in the evils that others commit against us – like several songs on the album, the recording is of the very first vocal take and it gives a sense of commitment and life to words that, in themselves, are very simple. It’s an album of surprises too – from the gentle understanding of “It Must Change” she launches us into the short tangle of “Go Ahead”, which uses the screeching call of the lemur as a substitute for a wailing guitar. On “Scapegoat”, Anohni sings of hate and brutality in tender, fragile vibrato, finding the sadness in our prejudices and tempering anger with deep regret. The reverent quiet of “Sliver of Ice” is based on the last words friend, champion and mentor Lou Reed said to her before he passed away in 2013.
There is something resigned about this album: it doesn’t panic or despair. “Why am I alive now? Watching all this going down,” she asks on the noodling, questioning “Why Am I Alive Now”. It’s a curse we all share. All we can do, this album tells us gently, is slow down, acknowledge the problems of the world and start the long, hard job of fixing them.
Songs to stream: It Must Change, Rest, Why Am I Alive Now
