Hopelessness - Anohni

Antony and the Johnsons was a band I didn’t like. I get it Hope There’s Someone is a pretty good song, but I have to be frank their lead singer’s Anohni’s voice just put me off. It wasn’t bad necessarily but to me it overwhelmed all other aspects of the band, and it simply didn’t appeal to me.

So Hopelessness by Anohni wasn’t something I listened to with high expectations however I’ve always thought that it was me with something wrong rather than Abohni so I did quietly hope the album would be great.

It wasn’t, it started fine and I almost thought it would be a incredibly good art pop album but past Watch Me the songs sort of stop being even mediocre and become boring.


The album cover of Anohni's debut solo album.


I’ve never been someone who believes in a divorce between music and politics and I understand that Anohni has some unique viewpoints as transgendered musicians, who aren’t usually heard in our society, but to me it simply overstepped the line between informative and a lecture.

The track Obama is the biggest victim of this, and googling about the politics of the album will show you that it off put a lot of listeners, it’s like Anohni saw Bono annoying people with his politics and thought, “I could do that.” Politics and music needs to be done subtly otherwise it becomes a lecture and if I want a lecture on politics and contemporary society I’ll go to someone qualified to give the lecture.

Despite all of this however the record does have moments of greatness Drone Bomb Me, 4 Degrees and the closer Marrow are all good songs which I thoroughly enjoyed, there are a few other songs I thought were decent but sadly the rest were simply not enjoyable to me.


Photo Credit: Getty Images/Frazer Harrison


The album could almost be seen as a decent album, I can almost look past its flaws as overall the album isn’t bad, but that’s its problem, just because it isn’t bad doesn’t mean it’s good. And in a world where you can pirate music, why would someone buy something that’s merely all right.





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