On her first album since 2016’s hollowed out electronic lament, Hopelessness, and the first using the “and the Johnsons” moniker in more than a decade, Anohni continues to soundtrack oppression, loss and alienation with heart-aching precision. The presentation has shifted, however: made with British producer Jimmy Hogarth (Duffy, Amy Winehouse), songs such as lead single It Must Change and Can’t add a soulful swagger to often brutally direct lyrics contemplating forgiveness for abuse and the sudden loss of a friend (“I don’t want you to be dead”), respectively.
Loss also permeates the incandescent ballad Sliver of Ice, which poetically traces the final moments of mentor Lou Reed’s life, Anohni’s multi-octave voice dancing round a searching guitar figure. While in the past, piano and orchestral flourishes augmented shifts in emotion, here cathartic rock excess anchors the winding Rest and the gut-punch of Scapegoat, while Why Am I Alive Now?’s paean to a dying world is something approaching light-footed pastoral folk.
Recorded quickly, with most of the 10 songs featuring Anohni’s original vocal takes, it’s an album that manages to wear its heaviness lightly and quickly buries its way under your skin.
