Album of the Week: Antony & the Johnsons - The Crying Light

There has always been a spiritual element to Antony Hegarty’s music. It could be the psalm like reverence that he performs his baroque-pop with, his lyrical motifs of transcending the body, or his blurring between the distinctions of death and life. He expresses spiritual longing and sensitiveness that is removed from so much of contemporary music: he’s written songs of falling in love with dead boys, desiring transfiguration into a bird, and hoping for something to be there waiting for him when he dies.
This thematic motif follows through on The Crying Light, Antony & the Johnson’s third full-length release (featuring string arrangements by Nico Muhly, best known for his work with Philip Glass and Bjork). Just listen to the transcendentalist calm of “Dust and Water” or annunciation evoking “One Dove”. The album’s standout track, “Another World”, expresses Antony’s spiritual longing in its most emphatic form: “I need another place/Will there be peace/I need another world/This ones nearly gone”. The song is not a lament but a meditation of transcending the physical while Antony himself acknowledges the passing of the sea, animals, plants, and all the things of this world he has loved. This is powerfully honest material that never falls into maudlin self-pity or religious righteousness. In this way Antony does of The Crying Light what Antony has done since the beginning of his career: tackle topics and content most other song-writers would seemingly rather leave alone. As usual, the album features Hegarty’s regular blurring of gender and identity (“Aeon” does this both, with the singer’s perspective never clear nor whom he addresses; is it a song to a male lover, a father, a son?). As well, Antony attempts to illustrate the beauty in the grotesque. Take “Epilepsy is Dancing”, a track that narrates an epileptic victim’s attacks as form a chorea (“Cut me in quadrants/Leave me in the corner/Oh now it’s passing/Oh now I’m dancing”). While some may find such lyrical content offensive, Antony tackles it with dignity and grace, never mocking but revealing the beauty in what others would find horrific or shocking. Even the album’s cover, a portrait of the legendary butoh dancer dancer Kazuo Ohno, decrepit from old age yet confidently garbed in drag, connects the groutesque and the beautiful.
Then there is Antony’s voice, as beautiful and characteristic as ever. Many have stated likewise, but what is most startling about Hegarty’s vocals is not his range (though exceptional) nor its affinity to songstress Nina Simone (which is almost uncanny), but it is how he is able to imbue each line with so much emotional resonance without ever over reaching himself to the point of bombast. As with Antony’s previous releases, his voice is going to be the selling point of the album. However, The Crying Light should be embraced as not just an exhibition of vocal gymnastics, but as a testament to the wonderment of the world and what lies beyond it in the way that only truly great art can. Antony’s art does something that no one else’s is attempting, and this is what makes this album truly essential.

Listen To: Another World, Aeon, Epilepsy is Dancing

RIYL: Nina Simone, Rufus Wainwright, Leonard Cohen