The gig was seemingly a last-minute addition to Anohni’s schedule, two months after the end of her European summer tour and just days before she returns to North America for a run of dates there, and it was truly long time coming for me. I first wanted to catch her around the time of The Crying Light but couldn’t afford to go, being a super broke uni student at the time; then had tickets to a Hopelessness show in 2016 only to have it canceled last minute due to Anohni’s laryngitis. However, third time’s a charm, and I even managed to secure a spot in the first row.
I expected the show to draw mostly from last year’s My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross (which I wouldn’t have minded as I really love this record) but it didn’t, really—it was more of a retrospective, featuring only three new songs alongside selections from I Am a Bird Now and Hopelessness, as well as some surprises, such as the dramatic “Cut the World” from the Wilson/Ambramović opera, a heavily rearranged “Another World”, a musically adventurous and thematically fitting cover of a traditional spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” etc. It sort of felt like a summary of her artistic output up to this point rather than a promo tour for a specific album (nothing from Swanlights or the debut, though).
But even though My Back… wasn’t the main focus in terms of repertoire, its sepia-toned warmth trickled into the new arrangements of older songs. It was especially interesting to hear the Hopelessness tracks stripped from their cold electronic sheen, with mechanical beats replaced by live drums and the icy synth stabs rendered by a string section. Backed by the latest incarnation of the Johnsons, featuring the last record’s producer Jimmy Hogarth on guitar alongside all-timers such as Julia Kent on cello, Anohni looked like an angel that fell to earth in a double-breasted bell sleeve military coat, with a mane of long white hair blowing in the wind, dancing, twirling, quipping about U.S. politics, and calling us her children in Polish. There was a loose, improvisational quality to the band’s playing that lent itself nicely to her numerous lyrical ad-libs, extended intros and outros, mid-song banter, and whole sections added to songs—for instance, “It Must Change” grew to over twice its original length and featured an improv about Jesus being a girl walking on water in a Poznań park, whereas trance-like “Another World” reached the 10-minute mark, slowly building a tension finally released by the first chords of “Drone Bomb Me”. Anohni only sat down at the piano for the finale to perform a breathtaking rendition of “Hope There’s Someone”. I was most impressed by her voice: pitch-perfect, rich, clear, and strong, with more depth that came with age but still capable of belting and reaching those high notes with no effort.
I cannot recommend her current show enough; it was such a beautiful, poignant performance. I was really surprised by her warm, playful demeanor that reminded me of the Johnsons’ earlier years; in most live videos I’ve seen over the past decade or so she seemed to have grown into a serious, intense performer, standing motionless, draped in haute couture gowns, hiding behind veils and masks, and it wasn’t the case here at all—turns out she likes bouncing around and yapping just as much as I do lol. Perhaps my only minor complaint is that I wish she had included one or two more songs from My Back… in the set—maybe the slow-burn juggernaut of “Rest”, or the fragile, beautiful epilogue “You Be Free”—but obviously you can’t have everything.
(Photo by B. Klimczak)
(Also not to sound too corny but I discovered Anohni’s music back in 2006 by watching her televised Bird-era show—turns out it’s still available to watch on a Chinese streaming platform lol—at the *very same* festival I saw her return to this year; very much a full circle moment for me as a fan.)
