Barbican Hall, London
“Maybe we could reincarnate like a backwards stitch.”
One of baroque pop’s most theatrical and daring artists emerges within the Barbican’s grandiose Hall, forever hopefully pondering life’s tribulations, reincarnations, romantic justices and the prospect of a better world.
In the midst of last year’s intensely hot summer, seemingly a far cry as of late, Anohni announced the rejoicing of her and her band The Johnsons in the arrival of their latest LP, My Back Was a Bridge for You To Cross. Against the brooding summer heat and ongoing wars worldwide, the soulful sounds of such a record remained enticingly reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s anti-Vietnam War record from 1971, What’s Going On. As the light guitar and piano refrains tenderly swoon this evening, Anohni’s delicate vocals eternally cry at the impending loneliness within her personal life in the opener ‘Why Am I Alive Now’ (“Seems there’s nothing left to hold / Except keep trying to accept hour after lonely hour”).
Similarly, ‘It Must Change’ strips itself of the grandeur of Anohni’s previous sounds to date, revelling amongst the heart-torn aura of this stoic genre; accentuated by her softened, soprano vocal range and poetic prose on an excruciatingly struggling relationship. Eventually, such an emotional outpouring bursts at the seams within ‘Can’t’; a euphoric release after a beautifully turbulent crescendo which remains bolstered by sweeping string arrangements colourising its illustrious backdrop, leaving reminiscent trails of Fiona Apple and Julia Holter in its wake.
These delicate subtleties eventually succumb to the omnipotent force of Anohni’s sounds of old garnered across the preceding decade. From the booming drum beats of ‘4 Degrees’ and ‘Hopelessness’, to the theatrical vocal chops of ‘Cut The World’ and myriad of harmonising synths and keys within ‘Drone Bomb Me’, the illustrious tenure of Anohni’s work to date is enticingly laid bare this evening, forever resonating across the Barbican’s walls. Whilst Anohni’s vocals largely remain the same throughout, forever delicately poised and daringly frail, her lyrics prove forthright and audacious (“I wanna see them burn it’s only 4 degrees”), caught within a series of existential grievances and poetic retribution (“Explode my crystal guts”).
The jarring chasm between these musicalities makes for a spell-binding performance, ultimately capturing Anohni’s most impressive and eclectic work to date. Illustrated further by a number of visual projections and audio snippets of prominent LGBTQ+ figures, as well as creeping cameos of Johanna Constantine dressed in white, adorned with deer antlers; Anohni ruminates the afterlife in tonight’s conclusion (“When I die, will I go? Hope there’s someone who’ll take care of me”) which sees rapturous applause from an entranced crowd, caught beneath the spell of an artist daring to dream, theorise and dramatise a sometimes ominous existence.
For tonight has proven Anohni as one of the genre’s (and LGBTQ+ community’s) most cherished and renowned acts of late, inspiring a highly emotive, theatrical and interpretively-artistic performance at Barbican’s Hall. Whilst some sections succumbed to a slight lull in their downbeat wallowing, the larger force of Anohni and The Johnsons’ set remained resounding, situating their leader as a stalwart of the community whose inter-generational artistry continues to summon a higher introspective power.
8/10
Anohni and The Johnsons' latest LP, My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross, is out now via Rough Trade Records and can be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Nomi Ruiz whose work can be found here.
Comments