Music Review: Antony and the Johnson's "I Am A Bird Now" via personal recollections and musings
I've been conspiring to invent tasks and computerized work for myself, despite my fatigue, just so I can put on Antony and the Johnson's second full-length "I Am A Bird Now." Checking websites twice and thrice, learning about obscure rhetorical tricks on Silva Rhetoricae, rereading old emails, just boring, inane stuff that shouldn't by any right keep me interested or awake even when it's 12:19 and I have a full plate of writerly activities in the AM.
But Antony and his Johnsons have created one of the most accomplished and lush late-night records released in recent years. I first put this record on in at 11:30 pm Sunday night, and listened to it 7 times in a row. That's without the "Loop" function turned on on my stereo; that's with the record ending properly, and with me hitting Play again in a very deliberate and conscious way. I've listened to it every night in the dark with the headphones on. When the 40,000 families who live above me wake up and ready for the day at 5:30 AM, I put the headphones back on and press Play again. I foresee playing it nightly until April breaks.
References to winter and evening aren't incidental. A&theJs include an incredible level of instrumentation - strings, layered vocal tracks by Antony, horn flourishes in one song - without ever overwhelming. Brief accents of flute in "My Lady's Story", for example, fill just the right amount of space in the song; the song is spare even as it weaves a beautiful smoky knot of melody and uses Antony's voice to best effect. All of the songs save "Fistful of Love" are down-tempo numbers of baroque beauty, as though Bach on his soul's darkest night sat down to compose not a requiem but a prom theme for you circa 1971, back when Carly Simon was big and "Wonderful Tonight" was years from drenching the AM waves.
And about Antony's voice: vibratto and melisma abounds in every note he sings, but it doesn't overwhelm in the way that, say, some opera taken from its stage context sometimes might. Boy George and Rufus Wainwright, to whom Antony's vocal stylings and poperatic sensibilities have both been compared, make appearances: Boy George and Antony duet through "You Are My Sister" like flying birds complexly assembling a wedding bower with ribbons in their beaks, and Rufus takes the lead on "What Can I Do?" as a fey two-note piano riff dances off-balance on the beat behind him.
Then, because this isn't enough, Lou Reed reads a little self-penned Hallmark poem at the start of "Fistful of Love": "I was lying in my bed last night / staring at a ceiling of stars / when it suddenly hit me / I just had to let you know how I feel". Cute, but yawn. Then Antony picks up the lead, his voice all over the oscilloscope, and those gentle horns that made Ani DiFranco's "In Here" so heartbreaking and rousing show up just where they need to. Here, of course, they go higher, to 11 if you will, and Lou Reed makes his guitar, which is way down and back in the mix, sound here like a Chicago bluesman's and there like a violin about to break. The whole exercise is worthy of Solomon Burke or Sam Cooke at his sexy best, but here there's just emotion rather than sensuality driving the effort.
It should probably be said that A&theJs won't be for everyone. Lyrically, the themes deal with mortality - check - fear of solitude - OK - and transgender confusion. Wha? Buh? But yes. Take "My Lady's Story": "My lady's story is one of breast amputation." Or the gospellish "For Today I Am A Boy", whose narrator yearns for the day he'll become a beautiful lady. And A&theJs probably make the publicists assigned to them quail: Antony can seem in some photos like Marilyn Manson's band's Pete Best: left off the docket, but not because of any real clash style-wise.
But if these are turn-offs for you, you'll miss out on some of the most original, considered, accomplished music of the last year. Call it chamber pop, call it popera, it doesn't matter. With the first spin of only their second record - and may they please keep them coming - A&theJs will work their way into your head and other, deeper, bloodier parts of you too. Expertly produced, exquisitely composed, "I Am A Bird Now" knows about everything you lost and want, and wants to convince you you'll be alright. You will.
But Antony and his Johnsons have created one of the most accomplished and lush late-night records released in recent years. I first put this record on in at 11:30 pm Sunday night, and listened to it 7 times in a row. That's without the "Loop" function turned on on my stereo; that's with the record ending properly, and with me hitting Play again in a very deliberate and conscious way. I've listened to it every night in the dark with the headphones on. When the 40,000 families who live above me wake up and ready for the day at 5:30 AM, I put the headphones back on and press Play again. I foresee playing it nightly until April breaks.
References to winter and evening aren't incidental. A&theJs include an incredible level of instrumentation - strings, layered vocal tracks by Antony, horn flourishes in one song - without ever overwhelming. Brief accents of flute in "My Lady's Story", for example, fill just the right amount of space in the song; the song is spare even as it weaves a beautiful smoky knot of melody and uses Antony's voice to best effect. All of the songs save "Fistful of Love" are down-tempo numbers of baroque beauty, as though Bach on his soul's darkest night sat down to compose not a requiem but a prom theme for you circa 1971, back when Carly Simon was big and "Wonderful Tonight" was years from drenching the AM waves.
And about Antony's voice: vibratto and melisma abounds in every note he sings, but it doesn't overwhelm in the way that, say, some opera taken from its stage context sometimes might. Boy George and Rufus Wainwright, to whom Antony's vocal stylings and poperatic sensibilities have both been compared, make appearances: Boy George and Antony duet through "You Are My Sister" like flying birds complexly assembling a wedding bower with ribbons in their beaks, and Rufus takes the lead on "What Can I Do?" as a fey two-note piano riff dances off-balance on the beat behind him.
Then, because this isn't enough, Lou Reed reads a little self-penned Hallmark poem at the start of "Fistful of Love": "I was lying in my bed last night / staring at a ceiling of stars / when it suddenly hit me / I just had to let you know how I feel". Cute, but yawn. Then Antony picks up the lead, his voice all over the oscilloscope, and those gentle horns that made Ani DiFranco's "In Here" so heartbreaking and rousing show up just where they need to. Here, of course, they go higher, to 11 if you will, and Lou Reed makes his guitar, which is way down and back in the mix, sound here like a Chicago bluesman's and there like a violin about to break. The whole exercise is worthy of Solomon Burke or Sam Cooke at his sexy best, but here there's just emotion rather than sensuality driving the effort.
It should probably be said that A&theJs won't be for everyone. Lyrically, the themes deal with mortality - check - fear of solitude - OK - and transgender confusion. Wha? Buh? But yes. Take "My Lady's Story": "My lady's story is one of breast amputation." Or the gospellish "For Today I Am A Boy", whose narrator yearns for the day he'll become a beautiful lady. And A&theJs probably make the publicists assigned to them quail: Antony can seem in some photos like Marilyn Manson's band's Pete Best: left off the docket, but not because of any real clash style-wise.
But if these are turn-offs for you, you'll miss out on some of the most original, considered, accomplished music of the last year. Call it chamber pop, call it popera, it doesn't matter. With the first spin of only their second record - and may they please keep them coming - A&theJs will work their way into your head and other, deeper, bloodier parts of you too. Expertly produced, exquisitely composed, "I Am A Bird Now" knows about everything you lost and want, and wants to convince you you'll be alright. You will.
posted by Wil at
12:51 AM
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