Future Feminism
Words By Dylan Mangan
The second song on Anohni’s live album Cut The World - released under her former group Antony and the Johnsons - is an eight minute monologue which meanders from our physical relationship with the moon to the feminisation of the Gods. It is a track which marked a new beginning in Anohni’s career, a more direct and sharp one. Tongue slightly in-cheek throughout, there is one moment which reveals an extra level of sincerity to her speech. “What’s great about being transgender is that you’re born with a natural religion,” she says. ”You’re almost automatically a witch.” The song acts as both banter between Anohni and the crowd, and as a new mission statement for her work. Future Feminism - the track’s title - is also the name given to a manifesto and movement started by Anohni and four other female artists.
Anohni first came to mainstream fame when her 2005 album I Am A Bird Now won the Mercury Prize. Having been a fixture in underground avant-garde drag troupe Blacklips, Anohni’s startling voice found her support from names like her hero Boy George and Lou Reed, and the latter had her contribute vocals to his 2003 album The Raven. At the time, the nomination of her album was controversial due to Anohni leaving the UK at 12 and growing up in California. In hindsight, there could not have been a better winner at a better time. Anohni’s voice on songs like Fistful of Love - a song about abusive relationships from the point of view of a victim yet to escape - is timeless, but the real beauty of the album is that it is not entirely autobiographical. It can be far too tempting to read Anohni’s songs through the lens of her transgender identity. “There's an assumption that the record is entirely autobiographical. But when I sing, for instance, 'For Today I Am A Boy', I'm not necessarily singing it for myself. I can sing it for myself, and often do, but... it has a more open feeling for me. I like songs to be free, like a loose garment. Sometimes I sing it for the room. Sometimes I sing it for a girl in my mind. Sometimes I sing it for a girl I know. Sometimes I sing it for a ghost hanging from the rafters."
While some of her early art suggests that gender feels like a prison, it has not necessarily been the case for Anohni herself, who has been openly transgender in private for years, “I’ve been talking about myself as transgender for as long as I can remember.” The decision to switch from releasing music under Antony and the Johnsons to Anohni can be viewed as an artistic decision as much as a personal one, as she pointed out in an interview with the BBC’s Annie Mac in 2016, “Anohni’s the name I’ve been using in my personal life for years now,” she explained, talking about her latest album HOPELESSNESS. “Since it’s a really different kind of project and sounds so different from my other work, it would be a good time to make that transition.” That transition was stark in a musical sense. Having become famous for the delicate and emotionally devastating nature of her lyrics, and the simplicity and power behind the piano-driven music she produced, the change in name also marked a change in approach. Anohni teamed up with producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneotrix Point Never, both known for experimentalism in the electronic music world, to create a more layered sound.
With this new release, Anohni felt like she needed to find a new way to express herself, and to allow her anger at the world to be liberated. “I haven’t spent a lot of time expressing anger in my life, so this record is a new chapter. Anger is energising: it’s quite an empowering feeling.” That anger is best put forward on the powerful track Drone Bomb Me, written from the point of view of a girl whose family has just been killed in a drone attack and who wishes desperately to join them in death. Anohni uses visceral language that can be tough on your ears, “Blow me from the side of the mountain/ Blow my head off.” It is designed to shock, and does so by forcing the listener to see the other side of America’s brutal drone policy. The presentation of political songs such as this one can often be their downfall - too stark and you are dismissed as an oversensitive social justice warrior. It is in the production that the real genius of the song explodes. Pop sounds and luxurious swells are used as a musical “Trojan horse,” crafted to draw the listener in with beauty before slapping you in the face with the harsh lyricism. A song called Obama calls out the now former President for his part in these drone killings. Anohni uses HOPELESSNESS as a call to arms to fight injustice. “I’m a nothing,” she says. “But it doesn’t take an expert to diagnose the whole stinking system. I talk to a taxi driver from Pakistan and they’re saying the same thing as me. Everyone’s feeling it. David Attenborough’s feeling it; all the people we trust are feeling it. Can we address it? Can we inhale it? Can we withstand it?”
Political albums can often fall flat but HOPELESSNESS was received with almost universal acclaim, not in spite of, but because of the message. It was a top ten album of 2016 in Thumped, Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, the list goes on. The Guardian praised “as profound a protest record as anyone has made in decades, brimming with anger, and yet, somehow, oddly accessible.” Subsequent releases have proven that this show of defiance was not a flash in the pan, as Anohni’s 2017 EP Paradise - exploring the relationship between ecocide and gender - demonstrated powerfully. In more recent times she released another protest song in response to the Republican National Convention in September, alongside an essay detailing her increasing despair at the American response to Covid-19, “What waits for us on the other side of this is a world undone by endless cataclysm and aching with senseless loss.”
The irony of all this is that Anohni somehow manages to project hope in defiance of her message, and her album’s title. “A child that’s hopeless doesn’t speak out,” she said. “I really believe in raising spirits, shaking the spirits out. I wanted to find that up feeling a lot of the songs.” That’s the magic of her music, repeated mentions of climate crisis and mass graves should be cause for dejection, but instead you find yourself empowered to enact even the most minor of changes. HOPELESSNESS acts as both new beginning for a more politically enraged Anohni, but also a forward thinking audience as she implores us, “Can you visualize a different path forward? We all have to focus on this now, with everything we’ve got.”
