Antony And The Johnsons: Cut The World

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS: CUT THE WORLD (2012)

1) Cut The World; 2) Future Feminism; 3) Cripple And The Starfish; 4) You Are My Sister; 5) Swanlights; 6) Epi­lepsy Is Dancing; 7) Another World; 8) Kiss My Name; 9) I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy; 10) Rapture; 11) The Crying Light; 12) Twilight.

Poseur or not, Antony Hegarty is enough of a professional singer to merit hearing live; but even then, there must have been some extra measures taken to ensure that a live album from Antony & The Johnsons would make commercial and critical sense. The measure in question was to hook up with The Danish National Chamber Orchestra, and rearrange the setlist with the aid of a whole arsenal of classical tricks — in the grand old tradition of Procol Harum. The addition of an orche­stra would hardly raise the bar on «pretentiousness» (this transcendental quality had already built its nest in Hegarty's mouth quite some time ago), but could allow to explore some additional op­portunities. Besides, Antony and strings had been on friendly terms from the start.

The setlist opens with one new song (title track), a trademark Hegarty lament with relatively few lyrics and lots of swooping orchestral atmospherics; includes ʽI Fell In Love With A Dead Boyʼ from a rare EP (Alice Cooper would have definitely misinterpreted that title); and, for the rest, concentrates mainly on selections from the band's self-titled debut and The Crying Light — I Am A Bird Now and Swanlights, for some reason, are underrepresented, although the title track from Swanlights does get a major restructuring — the dark nightmare of the original is replaced by regular pianos and strings, as if acknowledging that the original went way too far in the «cre­epy» department, and that there's always another chance to cut back.

I cannot say that the rearrangements open up a new dimension in the music, or anything equally presumptuous. Like the absolute majority of classical reworkings of pop songs, they have a glos­sy, soundtrackish quality to them, and I believe that, in addition to all the strings, pianos, and wood­winds, they could have definitely used more brass (there is a small trombone blast at the beginning of ʽCripple And The Starfishʼ, and brass plays a big part in the crescendo at the end of ʽTwilightʼ, but otherwise it is mostly flutes and recorders), but, understandably, they did not want to cut down too much on the overall fragility and wimpiness of the proceedings — Antony has so consistently cultivated this image of a living being made entirely of pure glass, that a really strong brass blast could shatter him to pieces right there in the concert hall.

That said, the arrangements do fit the music and the voice — never detracting from the emotio­nality already present in the songs; the best news is basically that I do not mind their presence, and it makes for a good pretext to hear these songs once more, and since these are mostly good songs, then what's the problem? In a way, it is fun to discover that the effect that Antony Hegarty produces on your senses stays exactly the same regardless of whether he is being backed with forty academic musicians or just a lonesome string quartet (or trio, or duo) in the studio. Maybe that is because he is a like a small chamber orchestra in himself.

The very fact that this is a live album, though, is consciously downplayed: audience applause is only included in the mix at the very end of the record, as if the ten songs in question were just separate movements of one single suite (well, in a way you could say they are — in a way, Anto­ny's entire career seems to be), and the only chunk of stage banter is a seven-minute speech that presages the suite and is included as a separate track, called ʽFuture Feminismʼ. Now, in a way, the speech is just a lot of post-New Age mystical bullshit, centered around Hegarty's trans-gender issues and his ideas on the femininity in human nature. But there is something about the way in which he delivers it that commands sympathy — a sort of lightweight, humorous teenage naiveté that makes you forget all the silliness because somehow it all feels normal: just a little fantasizing on issues of nature to help justify your perfectly normal inner queer. Presumably, not all the people with transgender mentality really seem like they feel at home with that mentality. Antony Hegarty, over these seven minutes, gives convincing proof that he does — and, as a bonus, throws in an intel­ligent crack at the Pope, which is not something that everyone in his profession does in an intelligent manner. Good speech.

Overall, this is certainly not an essential purchase, and even the hardcore fans should take note — many will find the orchestration excessive, if not generic or downright cheesy, compared to the sparse, elegiac arrangements on the studio records. But even then, it might be interesting to see how easily and comfortably Antony works in a live setting: his songs are so paranoid and claust­rophobic, after all, that it is almost unimaginable to have him reproduce all that suffering and fear of the world before a big bunch of real people — you'd rather imagine him as this total recluse, recording in a self-made studio in some log cabin somewhere in Tibet. Well now, at least we know that much — that he does venture as far out as Copenhagen, and that he does not have an artist's block when working with a large ensemble of classical musicians. Should we feel dis­ap­poi­ntment over the lack of integrity, or relief over the physical and psychiatric sanity? Make your buying choice, depending on the answer.

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Antony And The Johnsons: Swanlights

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS: SWANLIGHTS (2010)

1) Everything Is New; 2) The Great White Ocean; 3) Ghost; 4) I'm In Love; 5) Violetta; 6) Swanlights; 7) The Spirit Was Gone; 8) Thank You For Your Love; 9) Fletta; 10) Salt Silver Oxygen; 11) Christina's Farm.

He almost did switch to visual installations: accompanying the album, Antony has also produced a 144-page art book — beautiful, expressive, pretentious, and bound to be forgotten as soon as the next Antony takes over the crown of this particular fiefdom. But there is also the small matter of this fourth album, which does exist, even if it is not quite clear if it is the music that is the sup­porting companion to the visual arts or vice versa.

"Every everything, everything is new", the man wobbles during the opening twenty seconds, eno­ugh to make you understand that nothing is actually new, and thus, present a jarring paradox from the very start. Once again, morose piano ballads with either minimalistic, or lush strings-adorned arrangements, are the word of the day; occasional acoustic guitar backing, brass fanfares, and gen­tle woodwinds only reinforce the general rule. Trying to assert some sort of individuality for Swanlights is futile. All that is left is just to see if you can enjoy the music.

And I believe that it can be easily done, indeed. Perhaps there is one good general observation about Swanlights that can be made: as to what concerns my personal experience, the album has revealed itself to be much less «annoying» than its predecessors. No intelligent person can have a problem with Antony Hegarty's disdain for the ugly trashy world in which we all live, and for his deep-running desire to escape it if he cannot change it; but lots of people, myself included, can have a problem with the theatrical manner in which he expresses that desire — I mean, does one really escape the cynicism and cruelty of life by putting on layers of makeup?..

Swanlights, if only a little bit, but a little bit that I seem to have felt, tones down that theatricality. As it often happens, the toning down begins with the album sleeve: where we once saw creepy hallowed figures and photos of near-alien Japanese artists, we now see a mortally wounded polar bear (and 'Swanlights', for that matter, is his name). Pain, suffering, isolation, empathy, and eco­logical concern — all in one, but with a little bit of gritty reality thrown in, too. The same is with the music: a little smoother, a little quieter, a little less overtly manneristic, yet never ever betray­ing Antony's essential schtick.

The very idea of Antony doing a duet with Björk, especially at this time in her career, when the «nutty» streak in her brain seems to have infected most of the sane cells, could easily trigger a bathroom response from those who have their feet firmly planted on the ground. No reason to be alarmed: 'Flétta' ("lichen" in Icelandic) is a restrained, humbly-pretty duet that will be appreciated not so much for its melody (which is about as instantly memorable as, say, an average Liszt piano prelude) as for the delicate weaving of two of the most individual singing styles of the past two decades. The piano playing is Hegarty-style, the vocal flourishes Björk-style, and the two mesh together real well without trying to outdo each other in purely technical terms.

The title track is also a relative standout: for about six minutes, the regular pianos disappear, re­placed by a bleak apocalyptic nightmare with Eastern/psychedelic overtones, as Hegarty vocali­zes on the pentatonic scale to jarring blasts of feedback and all sorts of analog and digital noise. This is his first attempt at immersing himself into a gentleness-free atmosphere, as if to show us what can happen when the lonesome hero finds himself flung out of his little room at the top of his ivory tower and thrust into the world. Is there any difference between the lights of Broadway and the North Pole? Not for Mr. Hegarty, no.

Another highlight is 'Thank You For Your Love', which can be seen as either an original twist on the modern romantic ballad, or even as a cunning send-up; beginning quite generically, it eventu­ally reaches a point at which Hegarty locks himself up in a never-ending loop of "thank you, thank you, thank you"s which, as some astute reviewer has noticed, start sounding more like a "please please" — clearly, he is begging for something he has not yet received rather than simply showing his gratitude in such an obnoxious way. It is at least an intriguing development, and at most, it's just plain funny, even if that may not have been the original intention.

And overall, most of the time his minimalistic melodies work. 'Everything Is New' and 'The Spirit Was Gone' are delicate piano pieces; the strings, woodwinds, and chimes on 'Salt Silver Oxygen' interact in a beautiful baroque-tinged manner; 'The Great White Ocean' is a near-gorgeous folk ballad; and even though I am not quite sure why the laconic, Eno-ish piano phrase of 'Christina's Farm' had to be prolonged for seven minutes, that does not make it any less touching, per se.

One thing you definitely cannot blame on Hegarty is lack of attention to detail and manner; some of these numbers will pull your strings, others won't, but not a single one can be accused of not having tried to the utmost. Maybe he is a poseur, but he's definitely a worker, and Swanlights convinces me that, provided he goes on working as hard, he might have a couple dozen more albums like this one in him. Thumbs up for mope rock's upcoming AC/DC.

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Antony And The Johnsons: The Crying Light

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS: THE CRYING LIGHT (2009)

1) Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground; 2) Epilepsy Is Dancing; 3) One Dove; 4) Kiss My Name; 5) The Crying Light; 6) Another World; 7) Daylight And The Sun; 8) Aeon; 9) Dust And Water; 10) Everglade.

With the release of The Crying Light, preceded by the EP Another World a year earlier, we fi­nally learn why Antony Hegarty is so sad, and no, it is not because nobody wants to whip him because he is fat and ugly. It is because we have misused our planet and pretty soon we are all going to die — or, at least, mutate into legions of emo-coiffured zombies, lurking by night among the ruins of civilization.

At least, such was the conclusion reached by a number of prominent critics, who, upon listening to 'Another World', have decided that Hegarty went eco-conscious, and since there are few things more politically correct than a queer Greenpeace-friendly multiculturalist (the latter side is em­phasized by the sleeve cover, a photo of famous Japanese butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno — now that you all know what butoh is, this is practically edutainment!), The Crying Light shot all the way up to #1 on the pan-European Billboard.

Nevertheless, it's not that bad. Nobody really forces us to concentrate on the album's essence as a mix of butoh, masochism, and environmentalism, i. e. one more example of an «artist» so despe­rate for acceptance he'll try any combination of the uncombinable as long as each individual ele­ment is currently en vogue. The Crying Light has elements of it all, but they are not crucial. In fact, even the lyrics to 'Another World' need not necessarily be understood straightforwardly, in a «look what they've done to our planet» sense. The guy is simply telling us that he has no more hopes of happiness left for this world. Certainly many of us feel the same way, don't we?

A bigger concern than «trendiness» for me is that this third album, clearer than ever, shows that Antony has hit his threshold and has nowhere else to go. We get the exact same formula: minor chord piano ballads with tristesse-oriented strings and floating vocals. And this time around, there are no guest stars to provide the spice of life: it is Hegarty and his own griefs all the way through. Not that it is, in any way, easy to understand where exactly the man could travel from here — he has polished and fortified his niche to the major envy of all possible competitors, but, having dug so deep in it, there is no more way out.

It is good, then, that at least Hegarty's melodic talents have not abandoned him. About a half of the tunes are pure atmosphere, but when he gives things a little rhythmic punch, hooks start to materialize with ease. 'Kiss My Name' may be a fairly clumsy song title, but since it actually re­fers to the idea of Antony's mother embracing his future tombstone, it makes sense, and the vio­lins that dance up and down around the main rhythm create a beautiful fairy-tale impression, al­leviating the darkness of the lyrics. See, being dead is not all that bad.

'Another World' takes us in the opposite direction — utter minimalism — but makes its point with plenty of stateliness, reminiscent a bit of Brian Eno's faraway successes in the «ambient bal­lad» genre. (On 'Dust And Water', however, I believe Antony is going way too far with the mini­malism — as efficient an instrument as his voice is, he is long past that stage where it merely to­ok him to open his mouth and properly direct the air stream to make his point).

A few other tunes may deserve specific mention, but it will take a really major fan to emphasize their individuality, so let me just state this: no big admirer of Antony's inner world will be disap­pointed by the way he extracts it on the outside over the fourty minutes of Crying Light, yet if you'd rather treat The Johnsons as a moderately delightful, but passable curio born out of the ne­cessities of the early 21st century, you need not go beyond I Am A Bird Now. Thumbs up, out of respect for the intelligent craft of the final product, but in the immediate future, it would perhaps be better for all of us if Mr. Hegarty finally switched to sepia-tinted visual installations.

Antony And The Johnsons: I Am A Bird Now

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS: I AM A BIRD NOW (2005)

1) Hope There's Someone; 2) My Lady Story; 3) For Today I Am A Boy; 4) Man Is The Baby; 5) You Are My Sis­ter; 6) What Can I Do; 7) Fistful Of Love; 8) Spiralling; 9) Free At Last; 10) Bird Gerhl; 11*) Find The Rhythm Of Your Love.

Here is the official proscription list of people who love (to hurt) Antony Hegarty: (a) Lou Reed, founding father of the Velvet Underground, punk rock hero and overall horrid guy; (b) Devendra Banhart, singer-songwriter, visual artist, and an overall psychic type who likely has no problem finding God under the rim of the toilet bowl; (c) Boy George, founding father of Culture Club, quintessential icon of androgyny, and an overall queer type; (d) Rufus Waynwright, singer-song­writer, an overall morose introspective type with a penchant for classical influences; (e) Joan Wa­sser, real hot chick successfully mascherading as an indie artist by playing violin.

There may be others, of course, but these are the ones openly credited on various guest spots on Antony and the Johnsons' sophomore record — by the vast-reaching range and even distribution of this selection we must understand that everybody loves (to hurt) Antony Hegarty, and those that don't merely don't count as everybody. Apparently, loving (to hurt) Antony Hegarty was the ultimate artsy trend in 2005.

Does it help? Frankly, I did not even start to notice until I took a look at the credits. Sure, at times Antony started sounding a little strange — on 'Fistful Of Love', he'd start off with a deep spoken part; on 'What Can I Do?' he'd switched from his usual falsetto to a nasal tenor; on 'Spiralling', on the contrary, he'd pushed that falsetto even further. But how is a regular guy to know it's not just Antony Hegarty playing hypnotic tricks on us? How is he to know the exact limitations of this single man's vocal powers? The man is, after all, a bird now, and still he promises that "one day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful woman, one day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful girl". But today he is a child, today he is a boy. He may as well be Lou Reed, for all we know, or Devendra Banhart, or he might be Candy Darling, whose deathbed photo adorns the album cover.

But seriously, I Am A Bird Now is a terrific piece of work. There are no major stylistic or aes­the­tic departures from the self-titled album, but the formula has been refined and polished, the hooks tightened up, and the guest spots do help to alleviate the monotonousness of it all. Some listeners have complained, stating that the album is specifically geared towards gay audiences. This is bullshit. Obviously, if your ideal of a musical hero is Eric Adams of Manowar, or Ted Nugent, you will most likely take a ritual piss on this record and nail its shards to the doors of the nearest gay bar. But any sensitive, emotional person, regardless of his / her orientation, is equally liable to be entertained, and, perhaps, even moved by at least some of the tracks.

If anything, it is the unflinching devotion to masochism, not homosexuality, that continues to form the back­bone of Antony's whole image. It is easy to take 'Fistful Of Love' and laugh at it — either out of condescension for the whole idea of enjoying love-induced pain, or because of the specific way that Antony propagates it, from the «long-term club member» point of view. But it is a fine, nicely constructed song all the same, with a gripping crescendo whose pathos is either completely heartfelt or magnificently simulated, and, in these circumstances, who really cares about lyrics like "I feel the whip, I know it's out of love"? Besides, whoever prevents one from seeing "the whip" as a metaphor — and plus, Lou Reed is here speaking the intro, reminding us that, somehow, we have all somehow managed to love the Velvet Underground's 'Venus In Furs', where the masochistic message was far clearer pronounced. It just didn't use to have that elevated romantic touch to it, but times change.

There is, actually, a ton of different things to be said about each individual track on here. Lyrics, intonations, moods — Freud would have a field day, and there'd still be plenty of survivors left for Jung to mop them up. If anything, Hegarty shows you how easy it is to concoct a tragedy out of nothing: all you have to do is locate your inner male (if you are a male, it's not that hard), then find your inner female (a bit harder if you are not a female, but still possible), and make them do battle with each other. The energy of the ensuing conflict is inexhaustible, like the atom's power; and it is especially effective if you have plenty to eat, a good roof above your head, a host of lo­ving and caring people around, and a steady dayjob — because a human being needs suffering to stay a human being, and how do you suffer if there's seemingly nothing to suffer for? Let Antony Hegarty show you how to rub two sticks together.

I Am A Bird Now is definitely the man's best album that cannot ever be bested. When you stick to that kind of schtick, memorable vocal melodies, convenient guest spots, and a humble thirty-five minute running length just can't be beat. All of the songs make pretty much the same point, but all of them do it cleverly, and on the peaks — 'Hope There's Someone', 'Fistful Of Love', 'Spi­raling' — the man's unbridled romanticism almost transcends theater and makes one forget all about the conventions of the XXIst century. Thumbs up, brain-wise and partially heart-wise. (And yet, a sidenote: dear Mr. Antony, the line "Forgive me, let live me" may just be the ugliest dis­ruption of English syntactic laws that I have ever encountered).

Antony And The Johnsons: Antony And The Johnsons

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS: ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS (2000)

1) Twilight; 2) Cripple And The Starfish; 3) Hitler In My Heart; 4) Atrocities; 5) River Of Sorrow; 6) Rapture; 7) Deeper Than Love; 8) Divine; 9) Blue Angel.

Examine a non-provocative picture of Antony Hegarty (say, one on which he does not paint his eyes or face or construct a facial expression that presents him as Saint Anthony), and you will most likely think of the average school nerd, well stocked up on comic books and donut packs but severely suffering from lack of ladies' attention. But then it is exactly that kind of life that deve­lops the perfect Goth sensibilities, doesn't it?

Listening to Antony And The Johnsons, an album first released in 1998 on the small label of David Tibet (Current '93) but prominently noticed only upon its more widespread release in 2000 on Secretly Canadian, people usually laugh or cry. Some are touched and shaken down to the very foundations of their soul. Others giggle, at best, or resort to words like «bollocks» (as in ei­ther, «this is total bollocks», or «where are this guy's bollocks?» — witness how the beauty of polysemy can result in the same word acquiring opposite meanings).

To be fairly honest, my gut intention would be to join the second camp. Hegarty's major asset is his voice — a high, fragile, tear-filled vibrato that sounds thoroughly unique, out-of-nowhere to his young generation fans, even though old-timers have already heard it all before on those clas­sic Roxy Music albums; indeed, the similarity to Bryan Ferry is so transparent that one can't real­ly help but wonder whether the old crooner had not been fathering illegal offspring in his young and reckless days. The similarity, and obvious debt to Roxy Music, already kills off part of the excitement for me; but there's worse.

All of the songs are, generally speaking, written in one key: somber, ominous piano-and-strings ballads whose only purpose is to extol the enticing delights of suffering. «Gothic» certainly co­mes to mind, but, to their credit, Antony and The Johnsons have never been dubbed Goths: there is nothing apocalyptic, or infernal, or zombie-like, or Edgar Allen Poe-ish, about this music, just pounds and pounds and pounds of broken heart for consumption. And Hegarty is not being too cryptic about it, either: "My heart is broken", he says (peace, brother), "here in the cup of my hands — from between cracked fingers old blood spills".

The whole thing, with dark, funebral piano chords, strings that tug at the soul as if urged on by a slavedriver's whip, and Antony's tremolo hovering over it all, is a kind of musical theater that as­pires — not even to Classicism, but rather to Antiquity, with a bare hint at Far Eastern tradition as well. It is ridiculous and grotesque, and seriously off-putting, but I cannot even begin to imagine that a guy like Antony Hegarty professes a serious belief in this act; no man alive who does such things from the very bottom of his heart deserves a place in the art business.

But as an act, an artistic hyperbole in which reason disguises as feeling and calculation poses as emotion, I can dig this, and hold the opinion that it is the only way at all for the Johnsons to be dug without the digger growing a dunce hat. Because, as a manneristic show, the record is pretty much impeccable. The songs aren't particularly well written or memorable; instead, they unfurl like some sort of modern opera, with but one singer taking on all the parts, nine perfectly staged arias in a row. Their individual merits hardly exist, except each has an individually sick lyrical twist ('Cripple And The Starfish' is a chivalrous paean to masochism; 'Rapture' and 'Deeper Than Love' feature the word "falling", pronounced so many times that the mantra may eventually work, so be sure to have your feet firmly on the ground while listening; 'Hitler In My Heart' says it all with its title, really, etc.); but this cannot be held as an accusation, because it is not really a col­lection of pop tunes from a band — it's a mono-spectacle from an aspiring thespian.

It is thus that, out of deep, sincere respect for such elaborate staging, such lifelike decorations, such dazzling costumes, such a perfectly attuned lighting system, and such technical dedication on the part of the performer, I eagerly raise my thumbs up. But if you ever happen to meet some­one who tells you that the debut album from Antony and the Johnsons made a new man / woman out of him / her, you'd better run like hell; like I said, Antony and the Johnsons do not make Go­thic music, but there's a fair chance your rotting corpse will be fucked all the same.