These days it’s hard not to be concerned. For some people, for people like me, that means it’s hard not to grow tired. Weary, even.
Because if you’re anything like me, anger wells up at the sheer selfish stupidity of it all.
My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is the first album from ANOHNI and the Johnsons in 7 years, since 2016’s HOPELESSNESS. If you’ve never heard any of the music ANOHNI and the Johnsons make, and you’re a fan of music, especially exquisitely beautiful heart wrenching music, you’ll want to get acquainted real soon. And if you appreciate music that’s explicitly about something, you’ll want to listen now.
From the liner notes:
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. That was a really important touchstone in my mind,” says ANOHNI of her sixth studio album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross. “A couple of these songs are almost a response to the call of What’s Going On, from 2023. They are a kind of an echo from the future to that album from 50 years ago.”
And more:
“For me, there’s no heavenly respite; creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature.”
That’s a portrait of gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson on the cover who was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Johnson’s death in 1992 was initially ruled a suicide but was changed to “undetermined” in 2002 after a police investigation.
From “It Must Change”:
“You know how they always said that light was the opposite of darkness? / It’s just fire in darkness, creating life / So those opposites, they don’t exist / It’s just an idea that someone told you”
This kind of expression, this kind of music is powerful enough to help balance the scales.
