An extremely compelling, beautifully articulated, bonafide masterpiece.
HOPELESSNESS represents a new level of collaboration. The subject matter is daunting, but this is some of the most accessible and pristinely infectious music that any of these people have made. With that, HOPELESSNESS simultaneously broadens Anohni's appeal and brings that appeal into focus.
The production – as you’d expect – is consistently outstanding ... but it is the don’t-look-away lyricism that cuts provocatively through, adding up to an astonishing album that sounds fresh, intense and utterly compelling.
Hopelessness essentially represents the fight to find your own unique place in a world that has grown ugly, and a sincere desire for us all to wake up and take action to ensure it doesn’t get any uglier than it already is.
Even if I miss the personal struggles of I Am a Bird Now and The Crying Light, Anohni and her collaborators have created a dazzling musical artifact.
For an album containing a multitude of familiar conventions, Hopelessness somehow remains a fresh and unique experience.
Combined with Anohni's trembling and vulnerable vibrato, its grandiose sounds crescendo into a sprawling political epic that could inspire spontaneous bursts of interpretive dance.
Hopelessness sees Anohni take a harder radical line--her rich, red velvet voice set not in the pastoral piano landscapes of lauded past albums, but in the contemporary electronic stylings of two producers: Glasgow DJ Hundson Mohawke and his Warp label contemporary, Brooklyn's Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never.
It may have been easy, in the past, to sideline or typecast the music of Antony Hegarty: this is niche music, outsider songs for safe spaces. But Hopelessness is bigger and bolder than that – an accessible album tabling the big questions, the sort that few artists and fewer politicians dare to tackle.
Hopelessness is a response to the raging debate around diversity; it’s a shot across the bow to steadfast conservatives and ambivalent progressives alike. Anohni doesn’t just seek visibility – she demands it.
What can at times sound facile in its un-coded repugnance deepens, on repeated listens, into both sophisticated political statement and haunting music.
This music leaves no doubt that Anohni remains a strikingly talented vocalist and songwriter, but where the warm heart of 2006's I Am a Bird Now reached out to the listener, Hopelessness instead throws up a wall as it launches an assault on an unjust world. Anohni's targets deserve all the fury she unleashes upon them, but that doesn't make this any easier to engage with, even if you agree with what Anohni has to say.
These details are aggravating because, behind them, you can sometimes glimpse the brilliant album Hopelessness might have been.
I am very impressed and mesmerizing by this album. I already loved Anohni's vocals but hearing it ontop of some of the best artsy electronic production really is molded for my taste. The political commentary in the lyrics is great as well. Great album.
oh what the fuck i just relistened to this thing and it fucking clicked on me i'm crying
Hopelessness is one of my favourite album of 2016. Electropop sounds good, simple and catchy, it's exactly what the theme needs because it is less accessible. Contestation in Hopelessness is recurent but Anohni puts personal aspect, feels guilty (Watch me, Crisis, Hopelessness). It's absolutely astonishing, I mean it's not a simple contest album but a true therapy for Anohni.
After Hopelessness, Anohni is seeing some form of Hope with a strong battle against the poison-side of her country (I ... read more
The albums that I usually tend to like the most are those capable of making me feel something. And, by "something", I don't mean necessarily sadness or any emotion that makes me shed tears, but rather any sort of emotion at all, depending on what the goal of the song is. So, with that in mind, I can tell you that the album "Hopelessness" by Anohni 100% made me feel something. Many things, in fact.
The project, released in the form of an album that spreads its 42-minute ... read more
The best thing about this album is that Lizzo once covered Drone Bomb Me and thought that it was an intricately veiled metaphor for love and not just a brutally unsubtle song about getting drone bombed. Anohni's not good at the whole subtlety thing in the two records I've heard from her but I definitely want to do the deep dive soon bc her song w/ Bjork is great.
1 | Drone Bomb Me 4:10 | 87 |
2 | 4 Degrees 3:51 | 88 |
3 | Watch Me 3:26 | 81 |
4 | Execution 3:38 | 81 |
5 | I Don't Love You Anymore 5:00 | 83 |
6 | Obama 4:11 | 71 |
7 | Violent Men 2:10 | 78 |
8 | Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth? 3:36 | 88 |
9 | Crisis 4:42 | 85 |
10 | Hopelessness 3:54 | 87 |
11 | Marrow 3:01 | 84 |
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