ANOHNI

Hopelessness

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 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.

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

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.

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.