The loaded promise of a concert titled “It’s Time to Feel What’s Really Happening” was more than a catchy tour slogan for Anohni and the Johnsons on Saturday at a busy Symphony Center. This represented the unvarnished truth. Performing their first local show in over 15 years, the transgender singer and her band delivered nothing but emotion in one of the most courageous, vital and provocative concerts to grace a Chicago stage in recent memory .
Providing the equivalent of an elegy on the state of the world, Anohni sounded as if she were absorbing all the pain, audible and silent, coursing through our collapsing biosphere. Addressing topics that may remain taboo despite their increasing visibility, she confronted ecocide, loss, and decimation with a haunting frankness and painful vulnerability that challenged everyone in the building to share a collective pain.
She often felt like the grief would be too much for even her to bear. Austere, resigned, dejected: his facial expressions paralleled the pain of the stories. Wearing a loose white dress and opera gloves, Anohni often stood frozen in front of the microphone stand, wringing her hands or carefully moving her arms in an apparent attempt to avoid shock from the shells. Dark, dimly lit lighting and cast shadows reinforced the gravity of the moment.
Anohni’s beautiful, ethereal vocals provide alluring contrasts. Occupying a happy medium between registers, she mixes soft tones, vibrato phrasing and ample falsetto in elegant interpretations that are both fragile and fierce, sensual and intense. She stood at the intersection of soulful crooner, gospel balladeer and art-pop singer, with the role of protest singer serving as a common link.
Displaying deep levels of empathy and altruism towards the natural environment, Anohni seemingly internalized every line she sang. Played at slow, midtempo rhythms by an assemblage of strings, horns, guitars, piano and percussion, the music allowed him to dwell on what it all meant here and now. This meant asking extremely difficult questions, admitting one’s own guilt, imagining oneself in the position of other beings, bringing to light depressing details, and questioning established conventions.
Being an outsider is nothing new for the singer. Born in 1971 in England (under the name Antony Hegarty) and raised in California, she cut her teeth in the New York underground in the early 90s and founded a performance collective which allowed her to obtain a scholarship. This led to the genesis of a group she created in honor of gay liberation leader Marsha P. Johnson. After a handful of low-key releases, a series of studio and live collaborations with his mentor – and fellow rule-breaking experimentalist – Lou Reed constituted Anohni’s public breakthrough.
Immediately distinguished by an album cover that depicts photographer Peter Hujar’s iconic portrait “Candy Darling on Her Deathbed,” his 2005 LP “I Am a Bird Now” won the prestigious Mercury Prize. The record established the singer as an inimitable voice, visual maverick and uncompromising activist who excels on multiple fronts – and whose work helped lay the groundwork for the modern LGBTQIA+ and feminist causes currently in the mainstream. political focus.
His multifaceted production continues to be praised and achieve considerable success, particularly abroad. Over the past two decades, she has collaborated with filmmakers, orchestras, festivals and fashion events; titled benefits; written essays, books and videos; organized exhibitions and plays; and earned a second Mercury Prize nomination, an Academy Award nomination, and Best of the Year accolades from such heavyweights as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Pitchfork. An impressive pedigree for any creative, especially one whose messages, no matter how credible, aren’t usually the ones people want to hear.
And yet, the timing of Anohni’s statements could not be more necessary.
Although she made no direct reference to two massive hurricanes that decimated parts of the Southeast, climate change was a priority. Anohni used an extended version of the delicate “You Are My Sister” as an opportunity to integrate first-hand experiences and observations amid new and old verses. She talked about the cedar die-off she witnessed last week in the Pacific Northwest; to hear women share their fears of femicide in Greece; of watching scientists cry as they discussed the coming total collapse of coral reefs; from the veteran meteorologist who, a few days ago, went viral after shedding tears during a television report on Hurricane Milton.
“What does it mean to cry about a statistic,” she asks, hinting at the mourning and reflection that are at the heart of almost all of her songs. She asked much more difficult questions. Several of the toughest ones framed an entire song, “Why Am I Alive Now?” ”, while another who fearlessly equated humans with disease – “How did I become a virus?” – anchored “Despair”. She also exposed the glaring contradictions of elite systems, from organized religions to capitalist economies, while her exceptional nine-piece band reacted on the fly to the backdrop of chamber pop.
In addition to evoking the idea that “empirical truth has no opposite,” Anohni unmasked certain social constructs and unmasculated control in his implicit calls for understanding, compassion, and conscience. His love for plants, wildlife, insects, rivers and seasons is expressed explicitly, sonically and lyrically.
Cooing, humming, floating, scattering, trembling, moaning, sighing: Anohni used a diverse range of vocal techniques. Sometimes his singing evoked quiet sobs. He only became aggressive once, even though ruin, destruction, and injustice lurked beneath his mostly soft and tender surfaces.
The quiet, swirling “Manta Ray” could have passed for a children’s lullaby if it weren’t for the fact that it unequivocally deplored the disappearance of biodiversity. Set to a hip hop beat and catchy beat, “4 Degrees” saw the singer pointing the finger at herself for her complicity in the overheating of the planet. Despite its outward beauty, the acoustic folk of “Cut the World” harbored a wild tension that eventually burst through crashing cymbals and mallet-pounding drums. For “It Must Change” and “Can’t,” Anohni and company slid into rubbery R&B grooves whose upbeat trappings belied the solemnity of the words.
For all the sobering honesty and bold creativity on offer, the performance briefly lost focus during a lengthy piano introduction and an overlong subsequent reading of “Everglade.” There, the singer and her friends drifted aimlessly, succumbing to avant-garde excesses that the rest of the activities—including two interpretive dance sequences by Anohni’s longtime colleague Johanna Constantine—eschewed.
Indeed, no one could have missed or misinterpreted the objectives of the ensemble in the horrific “Drone Bomb Me.” The veiled Anohni sings from the perspective of a traumatized individual in a war-torn country who begs to die rather than survive amidst the constant assaults of an invisible, technologically savvy military power. Complete with heavy gong blasts imitating targeted explosions, the presentation took on heightened relevance due to the ongoing carnage and violence, particularly against women and children, in the Middle East and Ukraine.
During the encore, Anohni left some room for understated humor – a well-deserved exhalation. She expressed her gratitude and, sardonically, wished everyone good luck in the presidential elections. As she sat down at the piano and began playing the anthem “Hope There’s Somebody,” she stopped to think about stasis. She continued until, a few seconds later, she interrupted the song again and went on another tangent with verbose enthusiasm.
This pattern persisted, eliciting laughter and, tellingly, allowing a fascinating insight into a beautiful, restless soul for whom being comfortably numb is not an option. And neither one nor the other, for her or for us, despite the singer’s deepest wishes, is another world.
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.
Symphony Center setlist on October 12:
“Why am I alive now? »
“4 degrees”
“Coverage radius”
“Cut the world”
” Despair “
“This needs to change”
“You are my sister”
“Sometimes I feel like a child without a mother” (traditional cover)
“Can’t”
“Everglades”
“Another world”
“A drone bombs me”
Bis
“I hope there is someone”
