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Every track on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a Greek statue frozen in some tragic visage of horror. Anohni’s voice sounds delicate, angry, and exhausted, as she grieves track by track — for the unfulfilled promises of civil rights, for friends lost to drugs and depression, for the immolation of a world succumbing to ecocide. On one song, “Why Am I Alive Now?” her voice quivers and keens as she regards the discord closing in on her (leaves fall off trees, smoke chokes the air,...

Anohni’s career has been powered by and fascinated with change. On 2005’s “For Today I Am a Boy,” from I Am a Bird Now, she plainly sang, “One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful woman,” anticipating her blossoming evolution as a transgender woman. The artist’s stunning 2016 album Hopelessness was outfitted with chilly, sumptuous electronic soundscapes that pivoted away from the neo-classical palette of her previous work. And My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, Anohni’s first full-length album in seven years, is another decisive permutation in her musical identity: a swerve into blues rock.

The 10 songs here feature some of Anohni’s most laidback and unfussy arrangements to date. The album’s sound is, like Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, marked by minimalist, sometimes gloomy guitar strumming. My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross was produced by Jimmy Hogarth,...

At the Graduate School of Film and New Media, up-and-coming filmmaker Shun Tachizono studied under both Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Nobuhiro Suwa. These two Japanese film legends clearly had an influence on Tachizono's 2022 short “Scapegoat,” which takes a mature, patient approach to classic independent film tropes. Like so many young directors, Tachizono uses a gangster backdrop to tell a story of love and redemption. At only twenty minutes, it keeps the plot simple and the dialogue sparse. For both better and worse, it feels like a “thug with a heart of gold” film stripped down to only the basic elements.

Scapegoat is screening at Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia

It tells the story of Akashi, a low-level Yakuza affiliate who reports to ruthless and uncaring bosses. Akashi is a solitary, quiet man who seems to have no personal connections–a lonely noir hero waiting for an excuse to break out of his callous routine.

Anohni has announced My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, the first studio album under her Anohni and the Johnsons moniker in more than a decade. The LP is out July 7th via Secretly Canadian and Rough Trade, and features the lead single, “It Must Change.”

In a press release, Anohni explained that Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On was “a really important touchstone” while creating the new album, adding, “Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago.”

Anohni began working on My Back Was a Bridge with soul producer Jimmy Hogarth in 2022, when they created a series of demos together before assembling a studio band including Leo Abrahams, Chris Vatalaro, Sam Dixon, and string arranger Rob Moose to record the project. Pre-orders are ongoing.

“I want the record to be useful,” Anohni said about the album.