Swanlights

60:00 Release Date October 11, 2010
An album and hardcover book, on Swanlights ANOHNI explores animism and her connections with the natural world. THe album includes the song ‘FLÉTTA’, a duet with Bjork. While 'I Am a Bird Now' employed simplicity in its vision and 'The Crying Light' austerity, ‘Swanlights’ is more maximal, employing exotic percussive elements, string drones, distorted guitars and shimmering symphonic stages. In the lyrics of "Everything is New” ANOHNI asserts that each moment takes its own breath and is reborn. The title track “Swanlights” navigates a primordial and elusive plane, using expanding guitar tones and melodies to evoke a feeling of volatile majesty: “I’m gifted by your grace /It’s the Swanlights on the water / on that shining face". On "Thank You For Your Love", ANOHNI reiterates gratitude for care in a soulful track that suggests escalation into crisis.

The 144-page book contains a selection of ANOHNI’s paintings, drawings, photography, collages, and writing. Fragmentary images reflect glimpses of liminal states and illuminate ANOHNI’s animist approach. In one series in the book, entitled “Cut Away The Bad”, ANOHNI identifies a corrupting element within a newsprint image of a landscape and removes it in a meditative gesture towards reparation; by doing so, she suggests creating space for the restabilization of other elements reflected in the image. In the cover image of “Swanlights”, ANOHNI “cuts away” the image of the hunter looming over his prey in an effort to refocus the viewers attention on the specific character and dignity of the bear at her moment of expiry. Intersecting visual and musical gestures amplify and articulate ANOHNI’s mythologies.

“Swanlights might be [ANOHNI]'s richest album yet, with musical and thematic charms that take their time to take their hold. It's a brilliantly composed and played record, with the Johnsons responding exquisitely to [ANOHNI]'s production and the arrangements of young talents like Nico Muhly and Maxim Moston….[ANOHNI] continues to link herself with what she sees as a dying natural world, the martyr tying herself to the stake [she] claims the most. The love and sadness of which [she] sings, then, are more meaningful than they might first appear; as on last year's The Crying Light, [ANOHNI]'s talking about the end of everything, not just herself.” Grayson Currin, Pitchfork +

  Tracklist:

1 - Everything Is New
2 - The Great White Ocean
3 - Ghost
4 - I'm In Love
5 - Violetta
6 - Swanlights
7 - The Spirit Was Gone
8 - Thank You For Your Love
9 - Salt Silver Oxygen
10 - Christina's Farm