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Antony & the Johnsons, The Crying Light – Music Review

Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by Administrator in Music

Antony & the Johnsons The Crying Light 

As with most extreme bits of art, there are dissenters and disciples, and there are those that find the androgynous Antony Hegarty to be frightening and unbearable. There are also those that find him to be heaven without end. Like a fine scotch, Antony can definitely be an acquired taste, but if you’re willing to put your hairy testosterone holders in your murse for a bit, you might just find some damn pretty music if you haven’t already acquiesced to his siren’s call. 

His delicate balladry, which invokes the quivering vocal lilts of Nina Simone, is backed by the intricately timed tiny orchestra that can often melt a heart and sometimes send it down a river of no return where the darkness ahead can often give way to blinding light. Antony’s sweet childlike lyricism is often lifted to mature poetry by his impassioned heart wrenching delivery as he toils over transgenderism, death, rebirth, love’s elusive embrace, and the pain of a being a strange creature in a small minded world. Here he continues with more of the same brilliance that his last album, I Am a Bird Now, won much critical praise for and even netted him England’s coveted Mercury Prize, for which he beat out Coldplay and M.I.A., among others. 

  As the cover of the album warns with its image of the 102-year-old Japanese Butoh dancer, Kazuo Ohno, seemingly taking her (or his, if you prefer) last breath, this is an album dealing with the threat of age and decay and the hope that love might just make it all okay. Nowhere is the theme more evident than in “Another World” where Antony intones, “I need another place, will there be peace? / I still have too many dreams / never seen the light / I need another world, this one’s nearly gone, I’m gonna miss the birds, singing all their songs, I’m gonna miss the wind (cue weird flutes), been kissing me so long.” But the album isn’t all just one giant funeral march, for much of the time Antony also longs for love and freedom, both of which always seem to offset the nasty reality of mortality, as on “Aeon” where he loses his composure for once, screaming, “I love so much” to his baby boy, and “Kiss My Name”, where he breaks out a sly funky drum and cuts loose a bit. In the end, The Crying Light further hones Antony’s remarkable aural experience and leaves you with the feeling of attending a modern day church service for the castaways that have no other place to go, and in bowing your head and listening closely, you might just find your own spiritual communion. 

Good For: Transvestite book clubs, putting speakers in your flower garden, cleaning with Windex, dinner parties with a fireplace, crying, dying. 

Bad For: Boy Scout camping trips, heterosexual lap dances, Pro-Wrestler barbecues, homemade tattoos concerning barbed wire. 

by Devoe Yates

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Tags: Antony & the Johnsons, Antony Hegarty, Music Review, The Crying Light