It is often difficult to gain a balanced perspective on an album after reading a single summary of the music. Bias can tilt the review, as can personal taste, history and just about everything else that is unique to the person writing it. So in an effort to offer an expanded perspective on the music here are four reactions, four impressions, Four Takes on Antony and the Johnsons’ The Crying Light.

Antony and the Johnsons’ The Crying Light, was dedicated to Kazuo Ohno, founder of the absurdist dance form known as Butoh. Much like Ohno, songwriter Antony Hegarty is no stranger to bucking conventional ideas about his art. 2005’s I Am A Bird Now was an altogether refreshing and unexpected piece of gender-defying music, a genre that still is still not heavily represented in pop culture (Baby Dee is the only other musician I can think of off the top of my head). Though it was groundbreaking, the album also suffered from a lack of diversity in its songs. In the new record, Hegarty has more than mended this issue with an album that contains ten songs, each a distinct and polished gem. While he has lost none of his melancholy, Hegarty doesn’t sound at all pitiable due to the strength and beauty of both his voice as well as his abstract naturalist songwriting. It is hard to pick a single, but the tearjerker “Daylight and the Sun,” has touched me the deepest thus far. Though on a general level Hegarty’s vibrato vocal riffing gets a little self-indulgent at times, this is still bound to be one of the best albums of 2009. Shit, January is half over and already we have this and Merriweather Post Pavilion? Is this going to be the best musical year ever? [Jon Behm]

Antony and the Johnsons “Another World”

I find that often times the story of Antony and the Johnsons can overshadow the amazing music that the group, led mainly by singer/songwriter/piano player Antony Hegarty, has put out over the last few years. Starting with their left field gem I Am a Bird Now and continuing with last year’s Another World EP (which has a few songs that made it onto A Crying Light), Antony and his various backing players have made complex and emotionally jarring music that is both beautiful and challenging. The latest album from the gender bending singer with an angelic voice is slightly more dark and often more “cinematically” dense than his previous work. The Crying Light is draped with the dramatic arrangements created by Antony collaborator and classical composer Nico Muhly and finds the singer using a shaky and strikingly stunning voice that seems to capture pain and sorrow more than any other contemporary singer. The album seems more to be a flowing piece of art than their last full length, with more consistency over the course of the disc, but no songs that reach the magnitude of “Hope There is Someone” or “Fistful of Love.” After Hegarty’s amazing work on last years new-disco standout Hercules and the Love Affair, this disc is even more stunning and shows the emotional depth from this astonishing artist that never seems to become complacent. The Crying Light is a great CD and a shining example of someone taking personal sorrow and tribulations and turning them into something beautiful and redeeming. [Josh Keller]

photo by Don Felix Cervantes

Despite the adulation generously thrown at Antony and the Johnsons for 2005’s I Am A Bird Now, the album is far from easily accessible. And up until the release of last year’s Hercules and Love Affair album, to which Antony Hegarty contributed, I stood firmly by my initial reaction to his music. Upon the first listen, Antony’s voice sort of sounds like your grandma, standing in the front row of her Sunday morning sanctuary, warbling along with the church choir. Of course there are variations to that warble, but you can’t underestimate grandma, either. The main diversion to his primary vocal styling on The Crying Light comes with “Another World,” a track carried over from last year’s EP of the same name. It’s gentle, yet it offers a crisp emotional commentary – something that isn’t primarily heard through his often overwhelming approach. Another interesting detour comes with “Aeon,” in which Antony gives his best stadium-sized rock-ballad. The description sounds disastrous, though it’s anything but – “Aeon” oddly sounding a perfect fit for the entire group. As much as I’d like to say I can enjoy the variation and gripping delicacies of the album, I can’t. The moments where the group reaches beyond its normalcy are the moments that grip me, those are the moments that I find myself returning to. Aside from that, the other eight tracks are far too close to sounding like a chorus of blue-haired beauties for me to honestly appreciate. Nothing against grandmas, of course. [Chris DeLine]

I’m a firm believer that you most assuredly can’t judge a book by its cover. However, after viewing the cover art on Antony & The Johnsons new record The Crying Light, one is given a stark glimpse at the luxurious music that is to be found within, just as we were after seeing the picture of Candy Darling on her deathbed that adorned the cover of Antony’s last effort, the 2005 Mercury Prize winning record I Am A Bird Now. The songs are immediately arresting, haunting, and abstruse, much like the striking photo of Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno that graces the cover of The Crying Light, and to whom Antony dedicated the record to. (His picture also was on the cover of the Another World EP that preceded the full length.) Antony’s plaintive falsetto certainly took me some getting used to, but after having a couple years to fully absorb the solemn majesty of I Am A Bird Now, I was anxiously anticipating this release for quite a while—especially after hearing the stately grandeur of Another World, found on both the aforementioned EP and as the dramatic centerpiece of The Crying Light. It is a heartfelt prayer for a world that is fading, changing into something Antony doesn’t quite recognize, a world where the things he loves are leaving him, and is an elegant enumeration on the things he’s going to miss when he, or the world as he knows it, is gone. It’s gorgeous and indelible, as is much of this record. The arrangements are austere and passionate, and never threaten to overwhelm Antony’s voice, which is, and always should be, the focal point of the record. His subject matter is often bleak and poignant, just as it was on his first two records, but there are glimpses of light in the midst of this darkness. And perhaps that is the most tragic aspect of these songs, that the subjects don’t quite reach the promise of a new morning; either cut down too early in their lives, as in the electric guitar backed “Aeon,” or the inevitable tragedy of losing one’s mother on the resplendent opening track “Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground.” It is emotion laid completely bare, without any pretense or posturing, and it certainly will be a little much for some listeners to process. But in my opinion, this is a stunning work of great courage from a truly singular artist. Antony has created music so beautiful and passionate that the industry hasn’t even been able to create a category for him yet. [Erik Thompson]

Antony and the Johnsons “Another World” (mp3)

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Also: (Björk feat. Antony “Dull Flame of Desire” Video)