Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light
Antony and the Johnsons defy convention on The Crying Light
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Friday, 16, Jan 2009 10:14
Rough Trade, out January 19th.
In a nutshell…
Unconventional, irresistible chorus of heartbreak
What's it all about?
Highly anticipated full-length follow-up to Antony and the Johnsons' breakthrough second album I Am a Bird Now which scooped the Mercury Music Prize in 2005, went on to sell 500,000 copies and was crowned Album of the Year by both Mojo and Observer Music Monthly.
Who's it by?
Sussex-born, American-raised, Antony Hegarty is the instantly recognisable voice of the group, heard last year on Hercules & Love Affair's debut album as well as providing lead vocals on the lead single Blind. Composer Nico Mulhy provides arrangements on the album.
As an example…
"Then I cried in the kitchen/How I'd seen your ghost switching/As a soldering blue line/Between my eyes." – Epilepsy Is Dancing
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
This a very insular and very singular sounding record which will hopefully find the devoted fanbase such a bold artistic statement deserves. Mainstream crossover success does not, admirably, seem to be a key consideration and is probably even less likely in the US than here in the UK.
What the others say
"A deep, philosophical, poetic album that will withstand playing to the end of the year – if not, perhaps, until the end of the world." - Bernadette McNulty, Telegraph
"The album's big problem is not a lack of quality; it's the feeling that you've been here before, or you've been somewhere so like here as to make little difference." – Alexis Petridis, Guardian
So is it any good?
There are no 'massive tunes', no obvious singles, nothing for radio to grab hold of and, through mindless repetition, reduce to a dry husk of what was once cherished. This is a testament to The Crying Light's subtle magnificence.
I Am a Bird had the tunes, this offers a distinctly different proposition: an album-length movement of hopelessly beautiful melodic moments that both complement and juxtapose but ultimately cohere into one shimmering whole.
Those suspecting a hangover from Antony's spry vocal turn on Blind – a sudden burst of the funk or some stray beats –needn't worry. There is barely a bass drum struck for the entire duration. Where, with Hercules & Love Affair, Antony was singing to enrich and animate the work of others, here he is singing unashamedly, unapologetically, for himself. The result is a singular, often unbearably personal, listening experience likely to challenge existing fans let alone newcomers. It is an intensely inward-gazing and resolutely non-commercial piece of work, that basks at a slow, considered pace.
With this group, it has always been about the voice. But never more so than here. From the first second - a quivering, wordless vibrato - The Crying Light is a stunning choral experience that leaves the listener breathless and heartbroken.
For example: The sudden falsetto break on Epilepsy Is Dancing. The scarcely suppressed venom momentarily exposed on the multi-tracked coda of the title track. The barely adorned, pushed-upfront vocal of centrepiece, Another World - a eulogy for the end of the world (like Neil Young boarding those final silver spaceships on After The Goldrush) or the final, unblinking words of a man completely resigned to suicide? He mourns "bees", "trees", "things that grow". It should be lyrically laughable but Hegarty's delivery, over the barest of piano chords, leaves the listener unable to doubt, resist, question.
For the duration of the album we are engulfed in a glacial, breathtaking beautiful world of almost unspeakable sadness but full of countless crescendos and sudden melodic turns - Aeon, for example, is almost a glam rock ballad.
Throughout, the Johnsons provide some of the most sympathetic backing imaginable –low key brass, strings plucked with perfect deliberation, a lightly brushed snare, detuned violin – the wintry chorus these compositions command. The Bad Seeds are possibly the only band with comparable skill to weave around and into the front man – lead vocal understood as lead instrument.
The Crying Light is profoundly sad but never, for a moment, depressing. When its perfectly judged forty minutes are over it is a wrench not to immediately start them over again. Such is the paradox of the world this album creates – Antony's voice, the Johnsons' instinctive symphonies, render grief and sadness with such grace and fragility that they becomes enchanting, beautiful, and hard to leave behind.
9/10
Steve Braund