Gig review: Anohni provides moving tribute to Lou Reed at National Concert Hall, Dublin
A file picture of Anohni who performed Lou Reed songs at the National Concert Hall. (Picture: MICHAEL SVENNINGSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
★★★★☆
It's a rare treat to see Anohni performing in Ireland. Born in the UK as Antony Hegarty to Irish parents, the New York-based singer - who uses female pronouns - achieved fame with Antony and the Johnsons, and has been recording as Anohni since 2015.
In 2006 - a year after winning the Mercury Prize for I Am A Bird Now - she appeared alongside a star-studded cast for a Leonard Cohen tribute show at the Point in Dublin. Lou Reed was alongside her that night. An early champion of her work, he was bowled over by her 2001 EP I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy, according to Will Hermes' book Lou Reed: King of New York.
When Anohni asked Reed to perform with her band, both singers "seemed shy, awed in each other's presence". She appeared on his Edgar Allen Poe-inspired album The Raven and became a part of his touring band, duetting with him on 'Candy Says'. Anohni also performed that song at a memorial service at the Apollo Theater in New York 50 days after Reed's death, aged 71, in October 2013.
The Dark Blue event took place at Dublin's sold-out National Concert Hall on Tuesday, one of two performances following a show at the Royal Festival Hall over the weekend as part of London Jazz Festival. It draws on big hits and deep cuts from Reed's extensive, decades-long back catalogue.
Among those spotted in the audience were Laurie Anderson and Steve Buscemi.
The show opens with 'Jesus' off Velvet Underground's self-titled album from 1969, from which 'Candy Says', 'Pale Blue Eyes', and 'I'm Set Free' are also taken. Anohni stands stock still during the first song, staring straight ahead, never quite cutting loose for the rest of the show but losing herself in the music as required. Surrounded by six musicians, she fades into the background at times, her bleach-blonde hair making her ghost-like.
But that voice! The one that wooed Reed almost a quarter of a century ago - it's sublime, haunting. After telling the audience how Reed found her, believed in her, and fought for her, she offers up 'Perfect Day', a song everybody knows but perhaps not quite with this ferocity. While Reed's version - over 50 years old - is sneering, Anohni's is a powerful rebuke to the obstacles she and others like her have faced down the decades. She spits the closing refrain "You're gonna reap just what you sow" - it's vengeful.
She does two Nico songs, 'Chelsea Girls' and 'Femme Fatale' - the latter lacks that demure, unknowing quality. Some of the louder moments of the set, such as 'Shooting Star', and the spoken word songs like 'The Bed' don't quite hit. But they're quibbles amid a soaring set.
Anohni closes with her own song, 'Sliver of Ice', from 2023's My Bridge Was a Bridge for You to Cross, about a beautiful moment shared in the final weeks of Reed's life, as a carer played a shard of ice on his tongue; the sensation he felt was otherworldly. "I love you so much more, I never knew it before," she sings. It's stunning.
Anohni tells us Reed, unlike her, was never a people pleaser; she did him proud. The 90-minute show serves as a loving tribute to a peer, a confidante, and a close friend.
