Between sounds of a gloomy synthesized storm and the tide that comes and goes, a bride in white appeared with her antlers on stage to perform slow, vaporous convulsions with the folds of her train dress. She was surrounded by The Johnsonsalready … five minutes left Anohni to undertake the existentialist soul cruise jazz standard ‘Why I am Alive Now?’. The silk of her sharp voice enveloped the Nights of the Botanist, who escaped the real storm during the concert to tackle another…
…of beauty, with an ecstatic Anohni perhaps moving her arms in a slow cadence. Then she sang an austere ‘4 Deegres’ with percussion, piano, strings and her voice that almost made the staff cry and almost didn’t, as a lady wiped her eyes. Between the elegance of a cocktail bar from the finest future and the momentary emotion of some extremely sad songs was the game of the trans composer.
And the silence of a Norwegian funeral home, imposing and appropriate, I have rarely seen something as respectful, for songs that appreciate and need the tomb for their tasting. Also worth highlighting is the elegant play of lights that caused continuous contrasts between the singer and the Jonsons, sometimes in almost electric tones, like a sniper scope’s heat map, to be combined with the emblematic lighting of the Botanical trees in purple. , and, for example, starting with Anohni in Smurf blue with a nightgown that radiated the same vibes as the Martian who arrives on The Simpsons. Or a hologram of an angel.
And that was the concept, Anohni is an alien who observes us and intersperses passionately well-intentioned videos with her solutions for the disunity of the world, which worries her deeply. And, for example, she proposes to be governed by the wise leadership of mothers. In another previous, devastating video, we saw Marsha P. Johnson, the drag queen and LGTBIQ+ activist on the cover of her latest fantastic album (‘My Back is a Bridge For You To Cross’, maximalist love title), which told her story in prostitution, which she recognized was nothing good , although if she continued perhaps it was because she was chosen and it was something that had never happened to her. How much pain.
If Willy Veleta, from Canal Red, in a poisonous and coolly written article, wrote that Manu Pineda (from Izquierda Unida) is the most Palestinian of all Palestinians who are not Palestinians, Anohni is the same with the black race. He has an exquisite soul diva voice, as he demonstrated for the umpteenth time in his version and display of vocal strength of Odetta and his ‘Sometimes i Feel Like a Motherless Child’. That was at the end of the concert. And of course, Nina Simone and Diamanda Galas were also spiritually ‘in da house’ at the Botánico. As always, the mention of Falete also fell there.
Before, after an anti-racist plea, with a second of silence against the audience who applauded late, showing signs of having lost their way with English, ‘Manta Ray’ arrived, with that piano, and that beginning “In the trees” that refers to the ‘ Mad World’ Gary Jules. And that ‘Cut the World’ that takes your breath away with the sustained chorus of the same name, how can he hold it there, the former Antony who still has the same great voice as before his transition to Anohni, to be her, in a change of headline with a hyperbaton of letters by removing the ‘t’ and appearing the ‘h’ and exchanging the ‘y’ for the ‘i’ but the rest of his art and name remain similar in essence. What a voice.
“Good night, Madrid,” Anohni said at one point. And he began to make a speech when someone from the audience shouted something at him and Anohni jokingly reprimanded: “What are you saying about my mother?”, between smiles. And his voice said to her: “I love you.” Then it was the turn of ‘Breaking’, solo and with subtle arrangements with the support of the piano, and a distorted guitar solo to close. It is enough and there is more, even if well wrapped it is already a delight.
The Johnsons are nine musiciansfeaturing Julia Kent on cello, Maxim Moston on violin, Doug Wieselman as multi-instrumentalist, Gael Rakotondrabe on piano, Leo Abrahams as guitarist and Jimmy Hogarth also as a guitarist and producer, and we talked about an event this tour because Anohni was joining them for the first time in ten years. And in the still center of a stormy and beautiful universe that looks more like heaven because of the splendor of a voice that is still in shape, he demonstrated again in ‘Hopelessness’, with grand piano, and in the bossa nova soul of ‘It Must Change’, the subtlety of his tempestuous art.
In ‘You Are My Sister’ the artist took out the cell phones to a large part of the audience, who did not want to miss the digital portrait of this hard and emotional song, one more, where she interspersed messages such as “I am shocked by the violence.” against women” and defended the relevance of them occupying more preeminent places to run the world or commenting that they are “the witches who are hidden in the corners of darkness connected to the earth and prepared to burn.”
The duo of ‘Another World’ and ‘Drone Bomb Me’ was another good moment of a massively beautiful night, which continued with an overwhelming ‘Man is the Baby’ when the one-man dance group returned to now play a game of black debt diabolical shadows with a kind of reflective metallic thong.
After her evaporation, Anohni, with an octopus hugging her head that made her bald?, and after a Lynchian video, attacked, with her back to the audience in the encore, alone at the piano, her hit ‘Hope There’s Someone’, with the Jonsons looking at it in an enthralled and respectful formation to join in little by little and close with a light instrumental part without returning to any populist chorus. As he said goodbye to her, Anohni suddenly turned sharply and ran off the stage. As if she had forgotten to turn off the vitro. One more magical night at the office.
