ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS unveils new single ‘Sliver Of Ice’ + new album out soon

British-born, New York-based ANOHNI presents ‘Sliver of Ice,’ the new single/video from ANOHNI and the Johnson’s forthcoming album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, out July 7th on Remote Control / Rough Trade. “Now that I’m almost gone/Sliver of ice upon my tongue/In the day’s night/It tastes so good, it felt so right/For the first time in my life” ANOHNI sings on ‘Sliver of Ice,’ remembering some of the last words Lou Reed shared with her. The singer embodies the voice of someone whose experience becomes more awed and grateful as their life draws to a close; ANOHNI’s expressive and soulful vocals begin conversationally and end with wonderment and heartbreak, crying out atop the somber and intuitive strums of electric guitar played by producer Jimmy Hogarth. Following the release of lead single ‘It Must Change,’ ANOHNI unveils the ‘Sliver of Ice‘ video, directed by ANOHNI for Holland Festival. 

“A friend of mine expressed to me in the final months of his life that the simplest sensations had begun to feel almost rapturous; a carer had placed a shard of ice on his tongue one day and it was such a sweet and unbelievable feeling that it caused him to weep with gratitude. He was a hardcore kind of guy and these moments were transforming the way he was seeing things,” comments ANOHNI. “I wrote ‘Sliver of Ice,’ remembering those words of his.”

ANOHNI describes the creative process for My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, her first album since 2016’s acclaimed HOPELESSNESS, as painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. With this album, ANOHNI’s approach moved from someone tasked with challenging global denial to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. “I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. 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. I want the work to be useful, to help others move with dignity and resilience through these conversations we are now facing.”

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross expresses a world view by shape-shifting through 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.