Via the VPRO Luisterpaal you can listen to a new CD release. This time it is the CD 'Swanlights' from 'Antony and the Johnsons'. This is the track list.
Listen to this CD for free at the VPRO Luisterpaal by clicking on the logo below.
The challenge for Antony Hegarty is just how best to use that quivering, purring, sobbing, ecstatic, altogether original voice. Though he's a great disco diva (see Hercules and Love Affair's 2008 "Blind"), his Johnsons work tends toward the sepulchral. On their fourth set, ghosts still haunt Hegarty's piano-and-string-sketched chamber songs. But there's a new ease to his musical language here, and playfulness, too. He sings a breathtaking duet with Björk in Icelandic ("Flétta"). And the left hook is "Thank You for Your Love," which fully realizes the Southern soul sound Hegarty has flirted with on older tracks like "Aeon" and "Fistful of Love." The further afield dude wanders, the better he gets.
Misschien wel de twee meest uitgesproken stemmen van de pop op dit moment, die van Antony Hegarty en die van Björk. Op het vierde studioalbum van Antony & The Johnsons – Swanlights – kruisen ze elkaar even in een haast magisch duet.
Via the VPRO Luisterpaal you can listen to a new CD release. This time it is the CD 'Swanlights' from 'Antony & the Johnsons'. This is the track list.
It is warming to hear Hegarty sing so unencumbered by his demons.
Being blessed with a singing voice as unique and enchanting as that of Antony Hegarty’s must be something of a gift and a curse. On the one side, the emotion he is able to summon via his vocal cords is palpable, intense, brilliant; his 2005 breakthrough I Am a Bird Now hit like a sucker-punch, devastating in its contemplation of identity and personal freedom. But such is the gravitas at his command, it sometimes feels like everything he touches is imbued with a melancholy that can prove heavy-going. Follow-up The Crying Light was impressive, sure, but preoccupied by struggle – our impact on the environment, rifts in equality – it was a sombre, reflective work.