ANOHNI and the Johnsons Announce New Album

British-born, New York-based ANOHNI has announced My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross – set to be released on July 7, via Rough Trade and Secretly Canadian. Alongside the announcement, she has shared a new single, 'It Must Change', and an accompanying music video.

It will be her first album since 2016’s highly acclaimed HOPELESSNESS.

"I’ve been thinking a lot about Marvin Gaye’s 'What’s Going On'. That was a really important touchstone in my mind,” said ANOHNI of her sixth studio album. “Some of these songs respond from the present day to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago."

ANOHNI began working with noted soul producer Jimmy Hogarth. This collaboration was a first for ANOHNI, as she had previously composed and produced previous Johnsons records. She brought in notebooks filled with lyrical ideas, from which they were able to sketch out and plan a series of demos with Hogarth playing guitar and ANOHNI on piano.

Hogarth then assembled a studio band, including Leo Abrahams, Chris Vatalaro, Sam Dixon and string arranger Rob Moose, to record the full album. Hogarth’s intuitive guitar leads the listener across ten songs, touching on elements of American soul, British folk and experimental music. There is tenderness and instrumental brutality; melody and dissonance.

The album portrays a world-view by altering itself to conform with a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.

On the track, 'It Must Change,' ANOHNI describes systems in collapse with a deep, stirring sense of compassion for humanity. ANOHNI’s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. “We’re not getting out of here / No one’s getting out of here / This is our world,” she sings low and gentle.

“Many of the recordings on this record — like ‘It Must Change’ and ‘Can’t’ — capture the first and only time I have sung those songs through," ANOHNI explained. There’s a magic when you suddenly place words you have been thinking about for a long time into melody. A neural system awakens. It isn’t personal and yet is so personal. Things connect and come alive.”

The video, starring British social justice activist Munroe Bergdorf, is directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. "Munroe Bergdorf has done so much service for British society," she said. "She always impresses me with her articulate grace. Munroe’s dignity and ethical courage are a guiding light."

Album Art for My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross. /Press.

A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, taken by Alvin Baltrop in the 1970s, is featured on the cover of My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross. This reflects the 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work.

ANOHNI's approach to thus album has shifted greatly since her last. Before she was someone who was confronting and challenging global denial. My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross comes from a place of support for those already fighting on the front lines.

"I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief," she said. "I want the work to be useful, to help others move with dignity and resilience through these conversations we are now facing."

Pre-order My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross here.

Watch the video for 'It Must Change' below: