Antony & The Johnsons:The Crying Light CD Review
Long-Awaited New Album From Acclaimed New York Chamber-Pop Band
Jan 19, 2009
Such a concept may seem rather highbrow for a supposedly simple 'pop' album. However, the Johnsons' leader Antony Hegarty (www.antonyandthejohnsons.com) is the antithesis of the average rock 'n' roll frontman.
Towering above six feet, he's a mountain of a man who freely admits his sexuality blurs genders. His gymnastic voice shares an otherworldly quality with Bjork and Tim Buckley, while The Johnsons' Classically-inclined music goes seriously against the grain in a world where the likes of Pink hold sway.
The Crying Light: the natural successor to I Am A Bird Now?
The Crying Light takes up from where I Am A Bird Now left off. It presents us with sombre and soaring balladry, this time heightened by Nico Muhly's string arrangements. A protege of avant garde composer Philip Glass, Muhly's input brings a symphonic sweep to graceful songs like One Dove and Daylight & The Sun. The Johnsons' restrained playing is also impressive, ensuring theatrical songs like Epilepsy Is Dancing don't slide into the realms of cabaret.
Recent single Another World is the album's centerpiece. Written as an elegy to a dying world, the sparse musical backdrop goes from stark to dreamily melancholic and is the perfect vehicle for Hegarty's ethereal voice. Traditional Rock tendencies, however, are few and far between. The stuttery Kiss My Name has a more recognisable rock quartet sound, while Aeon is built around a ringing guitar figure reminiscent of Phil Spector's productions.
Avant Garde leanings from the Mercury Music Prize Winners
The most challenging track is Dust & Water. Again leaning towards the Avant Garde with its' drone of a backing track and Antony's ambient, echo chamber vocal, it's closer to Dub or the vocal experimentations on Tim Buckley's Starsailor album than anything that's raced up the Charts this side of the Millennium. Closing track Everglade comes in its' wake and applies a soothing balm with its' gorgeous, drifting woodwind and Hegarty's best torch song vocal performance.
While The Crying Light (www.secretlycanadian.com) is concerned with the changing landscape and the world's increasingly uncertain future, Antony Hegarty is anything but a new Sting or Bob Geldof. The classical leanings of his band's music are resigned and philosophical and owe as much to performance art as banner-waving Rock anthems.
Whether The Crying Light will retain the band's high profile remains to be seen, but such a brave and dramatic departure from the norm surely deserves applause in these conservative, recession-hit times.
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