Barbican, London
Accompanied by a virtuosic band and powered by her operatic voice, Anohni is as good as Nina Simone at interpreting songs – and her own catalogue proves equally malleable yet strong
‘I never felt a part of this world,” Anohni begins on You Are My Enemy. “I reject the way that we live.” The career-spanning songs and cover versions she has selected for this show, entitled Wilderness, reiterate themes of exile and alienation, to which the answer (as a distorted prerecorded monologue explains) is the power of creativity to remake the world and the self. In the quarter-century since she emerged from the New York art scene, blessed by William Basinski and Lou Reed, Anohni has held fast to the belief that communication through art is of existential importance, and with such unwavering intensity that she makes most singers look like they’re just having a laugh.
Wilderness is typically rigorous. Anohni and her virtuosic band – Gaël Rakotondrabe on grand piano, Chris Vatalaro on percussion, Leo Abrahams on guitar and bass – play before a film of swans gliding through the night. Sometimes they change colour, but it really is just 90 minutes of swans. Even swans don’t want to look at swans for that long. It’s much more interesting to watch Anohni herself. With her peroxide-white mane and floor-length black robe, she resembles a cleric or a sorcerer. She barely speaks and, when she sings, she stands motionless but for the hands trembling by her sides, as if making her entire body a channel for her extraordinary, operatic voice and the words it carries.
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