Antony and the Johnsons

To save my sanity, I'm trying a new strategy - listening and writing in smaller chunks. Let's get minimal.

Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light
Antony Hegary is an otherworldly transgender chanteuse with a voice that makes him sound like he's perpetually about to burst into tears. I can handle it in measured doses. I suspect that he and his band, the Johnsons, appeal most to two very different segments of the same niche, one that staunchly believes the opera should pull the same attendance as Spamalot and one that still thinks The Rocky Horror Picture Show is edgy and subversive.

The Crying Light is schticky, an eco-concept album that reverses the traditional contextual problem of concept albums - out of context, several of the songs are so exquisite they turn you into the type of baroque weenie who uses the word "exquisite" in casual conversation. In context, however, the record's earnestness borders on cheesy. "I'm gonna miss the wind/Been kissing me so long" Hegarty warbles on "Another World," a laundry list of the things that will disappear when the world hits full Goremageddon.

"Epilepsy Is Dancing" illustrates this discrepancy very well. A neat metaphor about creativity and the unquiet mind that hits all the right bittersweet notes, it's an out-of-context delight. But put it in the context of Hegarty's fevered imagination and its vision hews pretty close to that of a overgrown drama nerd. And you get this...

[Warning: theatre boobies ahead....NSFW]




Despite the Johnsons' somewhat discouraging resemblance in image to early Jamiroquai - what with the environmentalism and the elaborate chapeaus - their music, thankfully, is more like Secretly Canadian labelmate Jens Lekman. "Daylight and the Sun" and "Aeon" prove that their darker brand of cabaret can too reach soaring heights and overcome the distractions posed by Hegarty's voice. Unfortunately, when The Crying Light aims for anything less than a grandiose emotional impact, the result is always tempered by some loss of affect - unless the intended effect was always to remind the listener of weeping unicorns shuffling across a kabuki stage.