Swanlights
Year: 2010
Format: Digital
Grade: C+
Antony Hegarty's gorgeously androgynous voice is always the make-or-break point for most listeners when it comes to Antony and the Johnsons.
He played it up to its drama queen best on 2005's I Am a Bird Now, supplementing somber, piano-based chamber pop with his quavering cry.
On Swanlights, which came just 21 months after 2009's The Crying Light after four- and five-year layoffs after the group's first two albums, Hegarty steers the band into opening up and trying new things.
"Everything is New" takes a more orchestral, grandiose approach mid-song when previous efforts would've favored a pop attitude. On the title track, the glitchy pop leans in a new direction for the band, which had made its name on depressing piano balladry.
Even "Ghost," which employs the piano in a much more upbeat affair, makes Swanlights an interesting excursion for Antony and the Johnsons fans and an effort to reel in newcomers. The biggest boundary-pushers come at the end, with "Salt Silver Oxygen" and "Christina's Farm," the latter of which pushes the band into places it'd never dreamed.
It suggests that instead of twisting Beyoncé songs to fit its lugubrious mantra, Antony and the Johnsons still have room to grow on their own terms.
Tomorrow's entry: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
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