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'I Am a Bird Now' was the second full-length album by Antony and the Johnsons. It received critical acclaim upon release and won the Mercury Prize for the best album of 2005. This caused some controversy over the fact that Antony, although born in the UK, had lived most his life in the USA. In many ways Antony and the Johnsons are a New York based band. This album was on my list to buy for some time after I'd heard the opening track - 'Hope There's Someone' - on a compilation CD received free with a national newspaper. This was one song that I never tired of hearing; a completely original composition with a dramatic soaring vocal. But apart form the haunting opening track, 'I Am a Bird Now' didn't quite flutter my feathers as I'd imagined it would.
The album clearly has its merits and there is clearly some original inspired work here: a mixture of avant-garde pop, cabaret and classical components. The sparse piano-driven instrumentation is dominated by Antony
Hegarty's shockingly high pitched quavering vibrato - a vocal that seems at times to reach almost castrato proportions. The albums subject matter that deals with feelings of isolation, loneliness and rejection is skilfully rendered through a series of heart-rending torch songs that seem sincere in their expression of personal suffering. There are cynics who might quickly label this style as somewhat self-indulgent and pretentious, but I wouldn't adhere to that view. However, apart from one or two tracks and despite some more uplifting songs near the end of the album, I did find it heavy going after repeated listens.
Some songs really drag. 'My Lady Story' - a song about breast amputation - is dreary. Likewise 'Man Is the Baby' is a labouring chore whilst 'What Can I Do?' sung by Rufus Wainwright is just one long lamentable moan that transports you to an empty bar room where you're sitting in the corner on your own, staring into the bottom of an empty glass. The duet with Boy George on 'You Are My Sister' has been much praised in many quarters as an emotionally charged poignant ballad about broken friendship but for me it was a little bit too saccharine.
'I Am a Bird Now' is truly a gender-bending album and the dramatic third track 'Today I Am a Boy' deals with this subject directly. Even Lou Reed seems to express his female side with his talk-on-part at the opening of 'Fistful of Love' - I hardly recognised his voice. This is actually quite a clever song and one of the best on the album. It's partly a song about the physical abuse received from a lover, but it's also about the relationship between love and hate; how the one you truly hate is so often the one you truly love. What begins as a slow paced ballad builds up to a mad crescendo dominated by a brass section of saxophone and trumpets. As on every track Hegarty really puts his heart and soul into it both in terms the lyric and the emotional expression.
Lou Reed has a number of connections with the band having had them as a support act on tour and contributing to their previous EP releases. Another link can be made by the cover of the CD; a picture called 'Candy Darling On Her Deathbead'. Candy was a transsexual and one of those whimsical souls that hung around Andy Warhole's Pop Art Factory in the late 60s. She eventually starred in some of his 'art films' and was later immortalised in the Velvet Underground song: 'Candy Says'.
When listening to Hegarty throughout this album I didn't quite feel as if I was 'in the presence of an angel' - as Lou Reed described Hegarty the first time he heard him sing. His delicate vocal delivery does at times possess a fragile charm which some will no doubt find infectious, but it might not be the kind of voice you can bare hearing repeatedly during one sitting. The angst and relentless frailty in Hegarty's quivering tones seem designed to keep you on edge; maybe that's why Reed, Boy George and Rufus Wainwright were all called upon to make contributions. A lighter mood arises near the end of the album with themes of transcendence and liberation emanating from the tracks 'Spiraling' and 'Free at Last'. The exalting 'Bird Guhl' is a moving slow ballad that closes the album on a positive note.
Even though it might be a little heavy going at times with perhaps one or two tracks requiring use of the skip button, 'I Am a Bird Now' should be applauded for daring to dig deep into the territory of the androgynous heart and for doing so in such an intimate and unorthodox manner.
Tracks: Hope There's Someone My Lady Story For Today I Am a Boy Man Is the Baby You Are My Sister What Can I Do? Fistful of Love Spiralling Free at Last Bird Guhl
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Sep 1st, 2009
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