ANOHNI - Hopelessness
Critic Score
Based on 38 reviews
2016 Ratings: #68 / 1004
Year End Rank: #13
User Score
Based on 759 ratings
2016 Rank: #198
Liked by 36 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Drowned in Sound

An extremely compelling, beautifully articulated, bonafide masterpiece.

100
Evening Standard
The artist formerly known as Antony Hegarty unleashes a transhumanist urgency on her political new LP.
100
The Arts Desk
Levity seems the last thing on Anohni's mind during her ferocious attack on the state of the world, 'Hopelessness'.
100
The Guardian
As profound a protest record as anyone has made in decades, brimming with anger, and yet, somehow, oddly accessible.
91
Consequence of Sound
For so long, ANOHNI had felt like a supernatural force, of this world but able to see a thread of love and hope through all the sadness. By expressing the grimmest realities, that thread becomes harder and harder to find. But ANOHNI’s music makes that struggle all the more powerful.
90
Pitchfork

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.

90
Crack Magazine

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.

90
Loud and Quiet
Aside from some staggeringly strong songwriting, the genius of the collaboration is the juxtaposition between these synthetic textures and the soulful, innately-empathetic timbre of Anohni’s voice.
90
Exclaim!
HOPELESSNESS is her own call to action, art as manifesto, a reminder that there is nothing hopeless in creation.
90
The Line of Best Fit

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.

90
SPIN
It’s both a thrilling record and an occasionally confounding one; a statement that often invokes tightly controlled rage as a means of slapping the listener out of what one imagines has become our collective stupor. In short, it’s a protest record.
83
A.V. Club
Compared with the morose, string-laden music Anohni is known for, this is an Ariana Grande album, but it remains experimental and emotional enough to feel natural. Anohni is broadening her audience—not courting a broad audience.
83
Pretty Much Amazing

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.

80
PopMatters

For an album containing a multitude of familiar conventions, Hopelessness somehow remains a fresh and unique experience.

80
The Observer
The subject matter, then, is unrelenting. But Anohni’s impassioned delivery succeeds in making ecstatic music out of it, carried along by propulsive soundbeds; music that is equal to the apocalypse.
80
NME
Making relevant, accessible, uncringey protest music in this day and age is such a difficult task that most artists have decided not to bother. Anohni has been brave enough to take that risk, and the most vital album of recent times is the reward.
80
NOW Magazine

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.

80
Mojo

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.

80
Uncut

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.

80
Record Collector
Anohni is at her very best when rawly cracking over glacial blasts of percussion.
80
FasterLouder

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.

80
No Ripcord
While her work with Antony has mostly embraced a spiritual softness, her newfound defiance with her new moniker Anohni is just as vulnerable, except that she’s now communicating those bare emotions with a cold and uncompromising eye. What hasn’t changed, however, is that voice, a powerful vibratto that can tug into one’s deepest emotions with the most sensible and unpresuming touch.
80
Tiny Mix Tapes
The performances in these songs are as dramatic as they are musical: disarmingly direct, phenomenally compelling.
70
musicOMH
It’s a strange album that is melodically approachable, but lyrically draining. By the time you get to the eponymous title track, the unending nihilism within has done its work.
70
Rolling Stone

What can at times sound facile in its un-coded repugnance deepens, on repeated listens, into both sophisticated political statement and haunting music.

60
The Needle Drop
ANOHNI goes solo on her latest album, delivering some of the most politically charged art pop to come out in years.
60
DIY
ANOHNI isn’t subtle in how she deals with evil, but she does bring a skill to her first work.
60
AllMusic

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.

58
Resident Advisor

These details are aggravating because, behind them, you can sometimes glimpse the brilliant album Hopelessness might have been.

55
Under the Radar
Some tracks come across like impromptu recording sessions where ANOHNI worked through recently-penned material over production pieces messed around with just before she'd arrived at the studio. Still, there is enough in this unexpected assimilation of talents to hold intrigue.
40
Sputnikmusic
This is pop music, made to seem intelligent without the substance to assert its claims.
depechemode4lif
88

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.

Pitchkrof
93

oh what the fuck i just relistened to this thing and it fucking clicked on me i'm crying

WildChameleon
86

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

andrebtostes
95

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

Thalassophoneus
90

Beautiful vocals and amazing production.

insomniblvck
40

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.

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Track List

1Drone Bomb Me
4:10
87
24 Degrees
3:51
88
3Watch Me
3:26
81
4Execution
3:38
81
5I Don't Love You Anymore
5:00
83
6Obama
4:11
71
7Violent Men
2:10
78
8Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth?
3:36
88
9Crisis
4:42
85
10Hopelessness
3:54
87
11Marrow
3:01
84
Total Length: 41 minutes
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Added on: March 11, 2016