It’s Just Fire And Darkness

Anohni and the Johnsons “It Must Change”

I first heard “It Must Change” with no context besides being familiar with Anohni and immediately clocked that it was borrowing a lot from Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” As it turns out this is much more than a vibes-based aesthetic choice, and that the record is meant to be something of an echo or continuation of what Gaye was trying to do over 50 years ago. I think this serves Anohni well in that it gives listeners an easy path into her rhetorical goals – Gaye’s sound is relaxed and familiar, but also a music specifically devised to feel conversational and overtly message-based with a weary but not abjectly miserable tone. Anohni’s lyrics tell you what most reasonable people already know – climate change is tipping towards a catastrophic stage, petty hatred and division keep us miserable and unable to make necessary changes. Somehow all that is the sugar on this pill, the bitter part is stated near the end: “We’re not getting out of here, that’s why this is so sad.” She sounds exhausted and exasperated to an extent that the best case scenario is humanity figuring out how to be at peace before everything totally falls apart. So yes, fully agreed: it must change.

Buy it from Bandcamp.