THE title probably gives it away, but this is definitely not an album to listen to if you’re feeling a bit delicate.

Going it alone rather than with the backing of the band with which she operated as Antony and The Johnsons, UK-born but California-bred Antony Hegarty is, quite frankly, mad as hell on Hopelessness, with plaintive emotion now matched with unstrung anger to an extent that she’s never exhibited before.

The ornate electronica that sometimes lends her debut outing under the Anohni moniker a pop backdrop doesn’t disguise the severity of the subject matter – drone warfare, oppression, environmental destruction, state-sponsored surveillance – possibly in a deliberate attempt to bring her grim world view to a wider audience.

For all its excellence, it’s uncompromising, testing stuff, a demand for change that takes no prisoners, and it might not have worked under the command of an artist with a less distinctively passionate voice than Hegarty.

But her vocal range – which gets its best showing on Watch Me and Obama – gives this bleakness the element of beauty it needs to send its message across. An album that could barely be more of its time, and one that’s well worth bracing yourself for.