... Sam Smith whole career.


First Anhoni (formerly Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons) has the most beautiful voice out right now. Hands down. Like this isn't even a question. Even when Anhoni uglies that voice up like on "Obama" you can still hear the beauty in it.

The layers of depth on the lyrics of this album I mean damn. Take "4 Degrees" about global warming. So easy to miss it til you tie it back to the album's title 'Hopelessness" which more than a theme is a perspective for most of the album. Writing a song about global warming from a perspective of hopelessness - chorus 'It's only four degrees!!" Sung beautifully as if wooing a lover. Good lord.

"Watch me" sounds like a song about Anhoni until you realize father is big brother grown up.

But the thing that really pulls this joint together is the production. HudMo goes back to what makes him great. OPN holds his own. Shit is gloriously modern almost poppy niche.

So why put Ye in the title? Cause you're still reading right?

Seriously though its a damn shame that you never get to hear HudMo's talent really at work in anything he's done for Ye (are they still working together) because he has to do so much fitting in rather than letting his voice shine. IMO it also affected his solo work. But thank Anhoni for one trusting and putting the emotion behind it vocally to show the depth.

Shit is beautiful.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Just can't get into her voice. Never could ever since bjork's Volta album. Album sounds good though.

******************************************
Falcons, Braves, Bulldogs and Hawks

Geto Boys, Poison Clan, UGK, Eightball & MJG, OutKast, Goodie Mob

How can you not get into Anhoni and love Bjork?
Never mind I'm still praying on a proper duet album with the two of them. There's never been a proper compliment to Bjork's voice like Anhoni.

I made babies to "Dull flame of desire" fam!!


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Like, making "I want to see it burn" the pov of a song about climate change, or "please bomb me" the pov of a song about drones, is a little too "careful" for me, if that makes sense. You can't criticize that kind of sarcasm, but it doesn't offer a truly productive critique itself either. Just kind of a cowardly choice artistically.

It fits in line with Anthony and the Johnsons previous lyrical approach. Like sarcasm would be sung with a smirk. There's too much passion in this for that. It's just full embodiment of that perspective, meant to be uncomfortable not joke like.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Maybe sarcasm is the wrong word. But in whose voice is Anohni speaking in each song??

I suppose 4 Degrees is saying "When we act in ways that harm the climate, we might as well have these intentions / desires." Okay, fair enough. Point made. But I find it a little pat and not necessarily productive but the issue here is with people NOT having this mindset and yet acting in ways such that they MIGHT AS WELL think / feel this way. Maybe the point is to open people's eyes to the effects of their behavior -- but yes, I do think this one is dripping with sarcasm.

Drone Bomb Me is far more problematic in my view. This song is, in the singer's own words, "a love song from the perspective of a girl in Afghanistan, say a nine-year-old girl whose family's been killed by a drone bomb." But what 9yo Afghan girl in this situation possible thinks this way??? If this is not exploitation of a marginal perspective, I don't know what is.

Here is Anohni's own comment of the song: "It’s a feminine way of using an expression of confounding vulnerability to try to outwit a perpetrator that you can’t subdue. They often tell people to scream like crazy if they are being raped, because that can shock a perpetrator into a different perspective about themselves and what they’re doing. For me, as a young person, one of my only means of defending myself was to find ways to confound and disarm perpetrators. And I’ve often used vulnerability as both a platform to be witnessed and as a defensive mechanism."

So, to me, when taken out of context that is interesting psychologically but applying it to a 9yo Afghan girl in this situation is thoughtless and appropriative. This is where I was wrong in using the word "sarcasm," since from Anohni's comment I see that she doesn't actually intend this as the sarcastic "This is how the 9yo Afghans whose families you're murdering feel" message that I initially took it for, but rather as a potential psychological response that such a subject might have -- which I find completely unrealistic, and thus unjustified and unethical.

And here's a Tayyab Amin's comment on it, from Fact Mag, with which I more or less agree:

"It’s taken me a few days to muster some courage/strength/anything to watch this – USA drones have inflicted terror on people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia for over a decade as far as I’m aware. “I just want to write songs with teeth as sharp as my thoughts,” ANOHNI says, reeking of an emotionally transgressive mindset that takes no seconds to consider implications across wider ranges of perspective.

"Recent years have only highlighted how White America views nonwhite people, including their policed oppression of black people living there, as well as the black and brown bodies they fly over with combat drones. “Drone bomb me… I want to die,” sings the white American, imagining herself as a (nonwhite) child, orphaned by drone strikes. We wouldn’t doubt for a second that those who were killed on 9/11 did not deserve their fate. Since then, that death toll has been surpassed by those killed by US drones. “I’m not so innocent,” sings the white Englishwoman, deciding that this particular image of a South Asian/Middle Eastern/East African child is the one that she should portray. At least 724 children and other civilians have been killed by US drones in Pakistan alone since 2004. “I’m partly to blame,” she sings, choosing to wallow in imagined heartache for some higher, artistic purpose I’m sure, instead of giving platform and support to those families torn apart by her government.

"I think she intends for us to feel despair at how the child internalises blame. It’s such a reductive narrative with too few dimensions and too much absolving of accountability. ANOHNI allies herself with Givenchy and Apple to tell what she sees as a story abstracted from her, instead of rallying against the drone operations and fighting for those she commodifies by singing about like this. “My blood.”"

To me these are very didactic songs. On a political level, I believe 4 Degrees is justified but Drone Bomb Me is not. And on an artistic level, such didacticism is less interesting to me than psychological exploration and I find both songs almost anti-psychological, in that they represent totally unrealistic psychological viewpoints rather than exploring the complexities of the artist's own, or another's, psychology.

DRONE BOMB ME


Drone bomb me
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
Blow me from the side of the mountain
Blow my head off
Explode my crystal guts
Lay my purple on the grass


I have a glint in my eye
I think I want to die
I want to die
I want to be the apple of your eye


So drone bomb me
(Drone bomb me)
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
Blow me from the side of the mountain
Blow my head off
Explode my crystal guts
Lay my purple on the grass


Let me be the first
I’m not so innocent
Let me be the one
The one that you choose from above
After all, I’m partly to blame


So drone bomb me
(After all, I’m partly to blame)
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
(From the mountains and into the sea)
(I’m not so innocent)
Blow my head off
Explode my crystal guts


My blood, my blood
Choose me tonight
Let me be the one
The one that you choose tonight

4 DEGREES

It's only 4 degrees, it's only 4 degrees
It's only 4 degrees, it's only 4 degrees

I wanna see this world, I wanna see it boil
I wanna see this world, I wanna see it boil
It's only 4 degrees, it's only 4 degrees
It's only 4 degrees, it's only 4 degrees

I wanna hear the dogs crying for water
I wanna see fish go belly-up in the sea
All those lemurs and all those tiny creatures
I wanna see them burn, it's only 4 degrees

And all those rhinos and all those big mammals
I wanna see them lying, crying in the fields

(I want to see them burn)

I wanna see them burn, it's only 4 degrees
I wanna see them burn, it's only 4 degrees

I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them
I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them

I wanna burn the sky, I wanna burn the breeze
I wanna see the animals die in the trees
Oh let's go, let's go it's only 4 degrees
Oh let's go, let's go it's only 4 degrees
Oh let's go, let's go it's only 4 degrees
Oh let's go, let's go it's only 4 degrees

I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them
I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them

You know I didn't and still haven't read jack shit about this album until your swipes. But I've been a fan for a minute now which I think has some relevance. Bear with me.

>Maybe sarcasm is the wrong word. But in whose voice is Anohni
>speaking in each song??

On my listens it's my voice. I'm singing right along with the beauty and torment of it all. And as I said in the onset it's not so much about voice, but perspective. So I've got to take the perspective of hopelessness internalize it and channel it through these lyric and it works because of the way it makes me feel disturbed which IMO is a good thing.

These aren't the songs you should want to sing, but musically they make you want to, and in doing so makes you have to del with the discomfort of them. This is nothing new for her. She's had songs about rape and hitler before.

>I suppose 4 Degrees is saying "When we act in ways that harm
>the climate, we might as well have these intentions /
>desires." Okay, fair enough. Point made. But I find it a
>little pat and not necessarily productive but the issue here
>is with people NOT having this mindset and yet acting in ways
>such that they MIGHT AS WELL think / feel this way. Maybe the
>point is to open people's eyes to the effects of their
>behavior -- but yes, I do think this one is dripping with
>sarcasm.

For me on this song and through out it's not might as well, its own your apathy. Own the fact that you aren't doing anything and by not doing anything you might as well be encouraging it. You never even thought about it like this before did you. Never too action the nary to deal with these things. Well then own that shit because your inaction is the action.

>Drone Bomb Me is far more problematic in my view. This song
>is, in the singer's own words, "a love song from the
>perspective of a girl in Afghanistan, say a nine-year-old girl
>whose family's been killed by a drone bomb." But what 9yo
>Afghan girl in this situation possible thinks this way??? If
>this is not exploitation of a marginal perspective, I don't
>know what is.

See now this, I'm torn about. Having never heard the 9 yo in Afghanistan I never heard it that way. But I think pulling it out of the context of the album as a whole is the only way you can go the appropriatory route. I'll say more.

>Here is Anohni's own comment of the song: "It’s a feminine
>way of using an expression of confounding vulnerability to try
>to outwit a perpetrator that you can’t subdue. They often
>tell people to scream like crazy if they are being raped,
>because that can shock a perpetrator into a different
>perspective about themselves and what they’re doing. For me,
>as a young person, one of my only means of defending myself
>was to find ways to confound and disarm perpetrators. And
>I’ve often used vulnerability as both a platform to be
>witnessed and as a defensive mechanism."

It needs to be pointed out that I think that she is talking about some very serious experiences. I don't know what they are, but...

>So, to me, when taken out of context that is interesting
>psychologically

You can't take that out of her personal context.

>but applying it to a 9yo Afghan girl in this
>situation is thoughtless and appropriative.

I don't see it as her applying it to a 9yo Afghan girl, but applying it to the threat of drone bombing. That's the subject not the girl. To take that perspective there are only so many types of people being victimized my drones in the world. She couldn 't have said any of them without it being appropiative from your reading. So should she not make the song from the perspective of the victims of drone bombs?

Even more the 9yo girl aspect I think is very much related more to her personal experience as alluded to above. Her way to connect not her perception of the victim. The types of horror she's trying to emote stems from when she was 9yo.

>This is where I
>was wrong in using the word "sarcasm," since from Anohni's
>comment I see that she doesn't actually intend this as the
>sarcastic "This is how the 9yo Afghans whose families you're
>murdering feel" message that I initially took it for, but
>rather as a potential psychological response that such a
>subject might have -- which I find completely unrealistic, and
>thus unjustified and unethical.

What i said above. Not what they would say but how she would emote from that space.

>And here's a Tayyab Amin's comment on it, from Fact Mag, with
>which I more or less agree:
>
>"It’s taken me a few days to muster some
>courage/strength/anything to watch this – USA drones have
>inflicted terror on people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen,
>and Somalia for over a decade as far as I’m aware. “I just
>want to write songs with teeth as sharp as my thoughts,”
>ANOHNI says, reeking of an emotionally transgressive mindset
>that takes no seconds to consider implications across wider
>ranges of perspective.
>
>"Recent years have only highlighted how White America views
>nonwhite people, including their policed oppression of black
>people living there, as well as the black and brown bodies
>they fly over with combat drones. “Drone bomb me… I want
>to die,” sings the white American, imagining herself as a
>(nonwhite) child, orphaned by drone strikes. We wouldn’t
>doubt for a second that those who were killed on 9/11 did not
>deserve their fate. Since then, that death toll has been
>surpassed by those killed by US drones. “I’m not so
>innocent,” sings the white Englishwoman, deciding that this
>particular image of a South Asian/Middle Eastern/East African
>child is the one that she should portray. At least 724
>children and other civilians have been killed by US drones in
>Pakistan alone since 2004. “I’m partly to blame,” she
>sings, choosing to wallow in imagined heartache for some
>higher, artistic purpose I’m sure, instead of giving
>platform and support to those families torn apart by her
>government.

Again it's ill for me having listened before this context. Again I think it's skewing intent. I heard the I'm partly to blame as Anhoni, the white American whose taken the place of the victim, not trying to pretend to know what a 9yo would feel.

>"I think she intends for us to feel despair at how the child
>internalises blame. It’s such a reductive narrative with too
>few dimensions and too much absolving of accountability.
>ANOHNI allies herself with Givenchy and Apple to tell what she
>sees as a story abstracted from her, instead of rallying
>against the drone operations and fighting for those she
>commodifies by singing about like this. “My blood.”"

I think I've already addressed this.

>To me these are very didactic songs. On a political level, I
>believe 4 Degrees is justified but Drone Bomb Me is not.

Now this is where I and I think Anhoni would have a problem. Why aren't you crying about the victimized animals in 4 Degrees? Would she have to have said this is a song from the perspective of a Dolphin to be like that's fucked up? I see them as equally poingant. She isn't speaking to the 9yo or to the animals she's speaking to your apathy in their death. To you as the passive victimizer.

>And
>on an artistic level, such didacticism is less interesting to
>me than psychological exploration and I find both songs almost
>anti-psychological, in that they represent totally unrealistic
>psychological viewpoints rather than exploring the
>complexities of the artist's own, or another's, psychology.

And again I think this is where you're wrong. In fact I think it's the type of reaction she was going for. It makes you so uncomfortable there has to be blame put outside of yourself. There's something wrong with the way this is making me feel so there must be something wrong with the song. Nope. It's your refusal to turn it in on you and your psychology. She put her own psychology very deeply in it. She drew from her own emotions to give this perspective. You don't want it because it makes you uncomfortable. That to me is a job well done.

As thebigfunk alluded to before, she's always worn her politics on her sleeve and none of this is out of character. She cares about this shit a hell of a lot more imo than the writer who's trying to escape from the emotionality of it by deflecting to the easy but she's a white women projecting on to people of color. Anhoni knows marginalism. Knows pain, and IMO is bringing that to the music beautifully.

(forgive me if the end tone seems to come at you personally, not my intent at all).



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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I'm not sure at all what you mean --- the lyrics on this record actually seem disarmingly honest and direct to me. What do you mean when you say it is sarcastic? How is it cowardly?


-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

>First Anhoni (formerly Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons)
>has the most beautiful voice out right now. Hands down. Like
>this isn't even a question. Even when Anhoni uglies that voice
>up like on "Obama" you can still hear the beauty in it.

Yeah, her voice is ridiculous and it really shines throughout the whole record. A lot of range. I think shifting into more explicitly electronic-ish production really worked to showcase the dynamism of the voice; previously the orchestrated chamber-pop approach was often very good but could get tiresome after a while. I feel like this might be her first record that I think is really solid from top to bottom.

>The layers of depth on the lyrics of this album I mean damn.
>Take "4 Degrees" about global warming. So easy to miss it til
>you tie it back to the album's title 'Hopelessness" which more
>than a theme is a perspective for most of the album. Writing a
>song about global warming from a perspective of hopelessness -
>chorus 'It's only four degrees!!" Sung beautifully as if
>wooing a lover. Good lord.

Definitely. "Why did you separate me from the Earth?" We've known for a while she's on a cosmic eco-consciousness trip far beyond what most of us, even those of us who think of ourselves as enviro-foot-soldiers, can begin to comprehend. I get the impression she's someone who I would find really aggravating in person, but as an artist her sensitivity and idealism and absolute honesty is really effective and moving. I can't think of another record that is so relentlessly focused on the twin issues of environmentalism and human suffering --- yet still, at times, comes through in such a personal way. I've come to dislike the phrase "the personal is political" (mainly because it's overused, not because it's meaningless) --- but yeah, here it's very real.

>But the thing that really pulls this joint together is the
>production. HudMo goes back to what makes him great. OPN holds
>his own. Shit is gloriously modern almost poppy niche.

I hadn't actually checked to see who did the production yet but thought it was really gorgeous and very coherent throughout. A part of me would like her to go back and remix or re-record some of the early Antony material with production along these lines --- I'm a big fan of that stuff but the outcome could be really interesting.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

And as I've read someone else say, they're too on the nose.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I felt like I was being bludgeoned by the writing style in every song. No subtlety at all!

It was a real turn off for me, which was disappointing as I was looking toward to hearing..

The music sounds great though!

Lurk everyday.. Post once a month..

I haven't commented on other songs beyond the first two singles because I haven't really absorbed them yet, but since my take has been critical I want to add: even if I end up finding this record a "failure" from the lyrical and ideological point of view, it SOUNDS amazing and even lyrically and ideologically it's more interesting to grapple with an ambitious failure than with records that succeed at doing simpler things.

They got hooked to the melodies first. Then started piecing together the words. Then my son is like damn all these songs are depressing. So I'm like well the album is called Hopelessness. Then a light went off. They be singing it and putting all their little friends on to it.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

that 4 degrees song is about 10 words, and all of them don't seem to be saying much. what is the relevance of 4 degrees. since nothing burns at 4 degrees, i'm not getting his point. Same with Drone Bomb Me. Reads like it's from the perspective of a drone, but still doesn't make a lot of sense.

************************************************************

if the earth's temperature rose by a mere four degrees...

it's not singity-sing, far more subtle.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

.

************************************************************

Heard it playing today and it just clicked. Album is back in rotation.

******************************************
Falcons, Braves, Bulldogs and Hawks

Geto Boys, Poison Clan, UGK, Eightball & MJG, OutKast, Goodie Mob

perfect.

I've been coming back to it since the election ended. so powerful.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

maybe, after hearing a few songs, i'll believe this

************************************************************

https://youtu.be/ncCmDhMYBWg

******************************************
Falcons, Braves, Bulldogs and Hawks

Geto Boys, Poison Clan, UGK, Eightball & MJG, OutKast, Goodie Mob

She should continue working with Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never.

******************************************
Falcons, Braves, Bulldogs and Hawks

Geto Boys, Poison Clan, UGK, Eightball & MJG, OutKast, Goodie Mob