This new album from the artist formerly known as Antony Hegarty tore my head off and kicked it around the driveway for like six hours. In a good way. Feeling that the chamber pop of Antony and the Johnsons couldn’t accurately depict the hopelessness of a world ruled by violent men, drone attacks and climate change, Anohni shifted to the jabs and blurts of electronic music. It’s a bracing change, and one that dovetails with the singer’s ugly reflection of 2016, where restless beats underscore constant surveillance, Anohni’s swarthy croon sings ironically of the “American dream” of the death penalty and rattlesnake distortion threatens Obama for his shortcomings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZW1BBkquFA
Naomi Campbell has been in great videos before, bringing her allure to George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” and Michael Jackson’s “In the Closet.“ In “Drone Bomb Me” she turns away from the supreme confidence she’s known for in order to display intense vulnerability. Sitting in for Anohni, Campbell lip-syncs the song, tear-streaked and overwhelmed. A devastating performance.
Antony Hegarty rechristened herself ANOHNI and eschewed the piano-based art songs of her former band Antony And The Johnsons, instead embracing somber electronics created in collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke. These are intensely gorgeous songs even when the subject matter is ugly: On “Drone Bomb Me,” ANOHNI sings from the perspective of an orphan hoping to die in an attack, as his parents did; “Obama” condemns the president for unfulfilled promises and unprovoked aggression; “Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth?” questions the future of the planet. She often sings from the point of view of the villain she condemns: “I want to hear the dogs crying for water/I want to see the fish go belly up in the sea,” she claims on “4 Degrees.” The lyrics are unrelenting in their anger and pointedly accusatory—of specific countries, of terrorism and warfare, of environmental abuse, of self. But ANOHNI’s voice, a dramatic, sometimes operatic, often soulful croon, conveys warmth, tenderness and, contradictory to the title, hope
The Fat Angel Sings 