#swanlight

Anthony and the Johnsons Swanlights

Editor: Tamar Brazis, Art Director: Anthony, Designer: Garrick Gott, Design Assistant: Eric Nylund, Production Manager: Ankur Ghosh

Abrams Image, New York 2010, 136 pages + CD, 24x26,8 cm, ISBN 978-0-8109-9 680-9

euro 50,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song , Antony of Antony and the Johnsons pres­ents his debut collection of visual art, thought-provoking dreamscapes composed of paintings, drawings, photogra­phy, collage, song lyrics, and writings. Often fragmentary images, these pieces capture liminal states and elements of the unconscious. Some images are reclaimed and reconfigured in order to transcend their previous form. The intersecting mediums inform each other and create an interesting dialogue with Antony’s music, his creative muse, and personal mythology.

Fans and collectors will relish this lavishly produced volume, which includes Antony’s newest full-length CD Swanlights, and reveals the creative process of one of the world’s most gifted artists.

Swanlights è il quarto album del gruppo Anthony and the Johnsons, pubblicato il 12 ottobre 2010. L'uscita dell'album è accompagnata, in edizione speciale, ad un volume omonimo che raccoglie disegni, collages e dipinti di Antony. All'album partecipano Nico Muhly e Björk (che canta in Flétta). Infine, ricompare un pezzo dal titolo The Great White Ocean, già utilizzato come spot della campagna di Prada 2005/2006. La canzone The Spirit Was Gone è dedicata alla defunta figura del danzatore butoh Kazuao Ohno.

1. Dull Flame of Desire

2. My Juvenile

3. Flétta

4. Atom Dance

This blog is going to be left on hiatus until further notice. I'm leaving the playing field for a good reason. If you've been following my posts at all, you'll figure out why.

Antony & the Johnsons, "Thank You For Your Love," released on Swanlights, October 2010

Last week, I wrote about Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest. That album has been on my shelf for over two years now, and when I see the cover, I still think it’s an Antony & the Johnsons record. As with the covers to Antony’s I Am a Bird Now and The Crying Light, Halcyon Digest’s artwork features a bold, dramatic, black-and-white photo of an expressive, androgynous person who is brightly lit against a dark background. All three images look like they came from the same photographer (they didn't), to convey a similar feeling.

The similarities between these albums go beyond the cardboard. I reflected last week that theme of change was one of the things that draws me to Halycon. The same is true of Antony Hegarty’s entire discography. His albums intensely examine the process of transformation — from nonexistence to birth, from child to adult, from boy to woman, from life to death. They do so with more hope than regret, more joy than sadness, but the entire spectrum of emotion is there.

(While I’m examining the similarities between the work of Cox and Hegarty, I should mention that neither of them are heterosexual. I don’t know whether or not this informs their work. My guess is that their sexual identity does inform their work, but in ways that I might not speculate, so I won’t speculate. But it seemed weird not to mention it, since I’m drawing comparisons that even include their album covers)

Whereas Bradford Cox touches on the concept of transformation on Halycon, particularly with regards to adolescence, it’s an obsession for Antony; in his music the spirit is something that lives on perhaps before our births and certainly after our deaths, and it exists in a constant state of chrysalis this whole time. “The Spirit Was Gone” from Swanlights is a direct example of this. In this song, Antony ruminates on death once more — his presence even appearing, as it may sound to the listener, as death itself; death like something from a black-and-white Ingmar Bergman film. Over a piano and some strings, Hegarty's presence is calming and comforting, even as he sings mournfully about how "the spirit" and "the shell" become "disentwined".

True to his themes, Hegarty's songs seem to grow and transform around him, as if his compositions are seedlings and his otherworldly voice is the sunlight and water that causes them to sprout and reach out to unexpected places as they flourish — a process that is accentuated when you hear the orchestrated versions on this year’s live album Cut the World. Hegarty returns to a couple of different classic-pop structures — the number that builds in a brass-fueled climax (“Thank You For Your Love” on Swanlights), or the toe-dip into rhythmic pop (“I’m In Love” is the Swanlights version). Those songs are often the most immediate pleasures on his albums, but the more rewarding listens often come from the composition that develop in more unusual ways.

But even those more predictable pop numbers take on new meanings in the context of the album as a whole, and only reveal themselves with repeat listens — such as the way Swanlights opener “Everything is New” gives way to the gentle ode to passing, “The Great White Ocean” and hints that this newness is borne from death, not conception. By itself, the upbeat “Thank You For Your Love” comes across as a song to be played at a wedding anniversary. In the album, it’s positioned after the aforementioned “The Spirit Was Gone,” and achieves added depth as a joyful, grateful tribute to someone’s life.