The Crying Light

It's about time I come clean regarding my obsession with Antony and the Johnsons. They've released an absolutely glorious new album, The Crying Light. Antony Hegarty, much inspired by Aretha Franklin, has the most beautiful, haunting voice you're likely to hear from his generation. His style is ambitious, but his band have also taken a step forward, incorporating strings, drums, and a guitar into their compositions, ditching the regular piano. Rather than sticking to the winning formula that earned them the Mercury Prize in 2005, they decided not to invite back cameo vocal performances from the likes of Lou Reed, Boy George, and Rufus Wainwright (who, I admit, sung perhaps the most lovely song, What Can I Do? on I am a Bird Now). The hucksterish, Chaucerian fraud of a music critic at The Guardian, Alexis Petridis, dismisses the first track, Her Eyes are Underneath the Ground, as merely a replay of Hope There's Someone with strings, but I urge you to listen to both and then write to Petridis and his stupid pixie face (I recall well his four star rating of Britney Spears' latest offering). The highlight of the album is One Dove, pushing Antony's vocals to the limit. Yet all of the songs pull you in different emotional directions while steadfastly holding to the same musical formula. I doubt we'll see something like this again from Antony and his band; they've pushed the medium as far as it will go, but anyone who hasn't acquired more than just a taste for his voice will quickly be drawn into this album. Though, theres more than enough orchestral, poetical, articulated mastery here to stoke the fires of my obsession for a while yet.