Anohni is a UK born, US raised transgender woman. An alternative theatre graduate and founder of critically acclaimed New York music ensemble, Antony and the Johnsons. Formerly Antony Hegarty, she has released a stunning catalogue of eight studio albums, EPs and live performances that cross artistic genre and continue to push her own creative character.
Most recently Anohni’s superb vocal prowess has captivated a contemporary audience with the ultra-modern, electronic, political and environmental protest of her 2016 release, Hopelessness. The striking music, stunning vocal and unconventional subject matter of this bitterly angry album (topics include state-sponsored execution, torture, animal abuse and looming environmental disaster), have rightly left audiences with a profound emotive connection. Yet this pails into insignificance when compared with the deeply affecting personal despair of Antony and the Johnson’s 2005 sophomore offering, I Am A Bird Now.
Released in 2005 to widespread critical acclaim, I Am a Bird Now won the year’s Mercury Music Prize and deservedly cast the group’s lead Anohni (then Antony) into mainstream public consciousness.
The record is an overwhelmingly beautiful collection of ten captivating and phenomenally emotive songs. In just 35 blissful, intoxicating minutes, the listener is left with the same exhausting emotional disturbance as though having just watched a complex, moving and ever-intensifying three hour cinematic thriller. With an often disturbing choice of topic – domestic violence, breast amputation, death and transsexuality – this spellbindingly melancholic album is an astounding achievement in voice, music and lyrical content.
The album sleeve, itself a salient and evocative talking point, is the iconic 1973 Peter Hujar photograph, Candy on Her Deathbed. It captures the transsexual icon, Candy Darling, who starred in many Andy Warhol projects, perhaps most famously promoted as a Warhol Superstar – a group of personalities who would help Warhol generate publicity while he offered fame and attention in return. She was also name-checked in album guest Lou Reed’s 1972 hit, Walk on the Wild Side.
